Heligio itleiici 



ITS SEaUEL 



(JlljrTstiau Moxals. 



BY 

/ 
SIR THOMAS BROWNE, K t., M.D. 



WITH RESEMBLANT PASSAGES FROM 

cowper's task, 

AND A VERBAL INDEX. 



PHILADELPHIA : 

LEA AND BLANCHARD. 

1844. 






e. SHERMAN, PRINTER. 



TO THE READER. 

Certainly that man were greedy of life who should 
desire to live when all the world were at an end, and 
he must needs be very impatient who would repine at 
death in the society of all things that suffer under it. 
Had not almost every man suffered by the press, 
or were not the tyranny thereof become universal, I 
had not wanted reason for complaint ; but in times 
wherein I have lived to behold the highest perversion 
of that excellent invention; the name of his Majesty 
defamed, the honour of parliament depraved, the 
writings of both depravedly, anticipatively, counter- 
feitly imprinted ; complaints may seem ridiculous in 
private persons, and men of my condition may be as 
incapable of affronts as hopeless of their reparations. 
And truly had not the duty I owe unto the importunity 
of friends, and the allegiance I must ever acknowledge 
unto truth, prevailed with me, the inactivity of my dis- 
position might have made these sufferings continual ; 
and time, that brings other things to light, should have 
satisfied me in the remedy of its oblivion. But because 
things evidently false are not only printed, but many 
things of truth most falsely set forth, in this latter I 
could not but think myself engaged. For though we 
have no power to redress the former, yet in the other 
the reparation being within ourselves, I have at present 



IV TO THE READER. 

represented unto the world a full and intended copy of 
that piece which was most imperfectly and surrepti- 
tiously published before. 

This I confess about seven years past, with some 
others of affinity thereto, for my private exercise and 
satisfaction I had at leisurable hours composed ; which 
being communicated unto one, it became common unto 
many, and was by transcription successively corrupted 
until it arrived in a most depraved copy at the press. 
He that shall peruse that work, and shall take notice of 
sundry particularities and personal expressions therein, 
will easily discern the intention was not publick ; and 
being a private exercise directed to myself, what is 
delivered therein was rather a memorial unto me, than 
an example or rule unto any other ; and therefore if 
there be any singularity therein correspondent unto the 
private conceptions of any man, it doth not advantage 
them, or if dissentaneous thereunto, it no way over- 
throws them. It was penned in such a place and with 
such disadvantage, that (I protest) from the first setting 
of pen unto paper I had not the assistance of any good 
book, whereby to promote my invention or relieve my 
memory ; and therefore there might be many real 
lapses therein, which others might take notice of, and 
more that I suspected myself. It was set down many 
years past, and was the sense of my conceptions at 
that time, not an immutable law unto my advancing 
judgment at all times ; and therefore there might be 
many things therein plausible unto my passed appre- 
hension, which are not agreeable unto my present self. 
There are many things delivered rhetorically, many 
expressions therein merely tropical, and as they best 
illustrate my intention ; and therefore also there are 



TO THE READER. V 

many things to be taken in a soft and flexible sense, 
and not to be called unto the rigid test of reason. 
Lastly, all that is contained therein is in submission 
unto maturer discernments ; and as I have declared, I 
shall no further father them than the best and learned 
judgments shall authorize them ; under favour of which 
considerations I have made its secrecy publick, and 
committed the truth thereof to every ingenuous reader. 

Thomas Browne. 



1* 



EDITOR'S PREFACE. 

It is very remarkable that notwithstanding their close 
relationship these two Treatises by Sir Thomas Browne 
have never been linked together in the same volume 
until now. Religio Medici was the earliest production 
of his pen ; that admirable Sequel Christian Morals the 
last which fell from it. It is delightful to perceive the 
perfect harmony that reigns in both works although well 
nigh half a century rolled away between the respective 
periods of their composition. The pure and lofty 
thoughts which dwelt in his heart in the pensive evening 
of life were but the same that the author had cherished 
and avowed in the bright morn of early manhood. 

Religio Medici was at first surreptitiously published, 
in 1642. Even in those ' dissonant times' (to use the 
gentle phrase of Harry Lawes who lived in them) this 
piece of serene wisdom found so many readers that two 
editions were immediately disposed of. It came out 
under the author's sanction in the following year, and 
numerous reimpressions were called for in his lifetime. 
Some of his other works Sir Thomas Browne greatly 
altered and enlarged, but a majestic self-esteem led him 
to make no change whatever in this confession of faith 
after he had once delivered it to the world. 

Its fate in one respect has been peculiarly untoward, 
for it has been constantly printed with great incorrect- 



Vni EDITOR S PREFACE. 

ness. A table of errata prefixed to the authentick edi- 
tion of 1643, shows that it underwent a nice examination 
by the author ; who seems thenceforward to have left 
the care of the press to others, by whom the trust was 
discharged with singular indiligence. The subsequent 
editions were printed without any reference having been 
made to that table ! A few of the errours pointed out 
in it were occasionally detected ; but many have been 
constantly overpassed which mar the author's meaning, 
and some that contradict and reverse it. The impres- 
sion of 1682 (the year in which Sir T. B. died) is the 
faultiest of any, for it not only continues those impor- 
tant blunders but is deformed by many new ones. The 
latter have been avoided in the foho of 1686, but it 
leaves the others untouched. The reprint of 1736 can- 
not claim even this modified praise.* 

So much care has been taken to banish the whole of 
these errours, as well as to weigh the irresolute punc- 



* There have been three modern editions of religio medici. The first 
of these was printed at Oxford in 1831. The editor states that "every 
former edition is so corrupt, and so full of errata, as in many places to 
be utterly unintelligible." But he himself never saw the table mentioned 
above, and he perpetuates errours which should have been cured by it. 

The second modern edition appeared in the valuable collection of Sir 
Thomas Browne's Works printed at Norwich in 1835. Mr. Wilkin, the 
editor, candidly confesses that he did not discover until the last sheet 
had been worked off, that the errours enumerated in the table of 1G43, 
Jiad passed through every subsequent edition, his own included. He 
cancelled some, and gave an accurate account of the whole at the end of 
his preface. 

The third was published in London in 1838. The editor did not con- 
sider it needful to undergo the fatigue of collating the earlier impres- 
.-sions ; he has not even used the information he might have acquired so 
easily from Mr. Wilkin, but has been content with giving a tolerably 
faithful reprint of the worthless edition of 1682. 



EDITOR S PREFACE. IX 

tuation of every previous edition, that the one now 
oftered to the public may venture to claim the singular 
praise of being the first that presents with accuracy the 
text of a book which issued from the press two hundred 
years ago. 

Doubtless this work of an original thinker may aflbrd 
room for annotations ; yet it is hoped there will be no 
irreverence in divesting it of those (equal to itself in 
bulk) by which it has been hitherto accompanied.* 
They have been reprinted often enough to be placed 
within the reach of any one who may be anxious to 
consult them, but their constant alliance with the text is 
unnecessary and uncomfortable. They are by no means 
entitled to keep company for ever with the tersely-writ- 
ten volume to which they have been tacked so long, for 
they are often composed in a vein quite repugnant to 
that of Sir Thomas Browne, and with a total forgetful- 
ness of the caveat to be found at the end of his preface. 

Every one acknowledges the luxury of possessing the 
text of a favourite author (the man who has no favourite 
books is incapable of friendship) without the clog of a 
commentary proceeding from different and perhaps un- 
congenial minds. In the wanderings of the eye from 
the author to his annotators we too often have that train 
of thought suddenly snapt in which he was profitably 



* Though diffuse they are omissive, and sometimes charge Sir Thomas 
Browne (as he elsewhere tells us) with borrowing from books which he 
never read. Sir Kenelm Digby's Observations were occasioned by the 
corrupt and surreptitious edition, and often have no application to the 
genuine one. They wore accordingly denounced therein as hasty and 
erroneous, and as intended to exhibit the conceptions of the observator 
rather than to illustrate those of the author. 



X EDITORS PREFACE. 

leading us,* or we regale upon some frigid criticism 
which makes nothing manifest but the reluctance dull 
men feel to let a man of genius express himself after his 
own fashion. Surely he who wrote religio medici has 
attained the dignity of a classic, and well deserves to 
have his pure gold presented to us unmixt with baser 
matter. 

This is one of the books which give pleasing evidence 
of the stability of our language for the two last centuries. 
The thoughts of Sir Thomas Browne, profound and 
original as they are, and notwithstanding the out o' the 
way-ness of his expressions, may be apprehended as 
readily now as when they were first poured forth ; and 
this noble creature who wrote ' not for an age, but for 
all time,' is quite as perspicuous as some whom we call 
(by the happiest phrase in the world) writers of the 



We have the testimony of Sir Thomas's daughter 
that ' CHRISTIAN MORALS was the last work of her honoured 
and learned father.' It must be added with regret, for 
the fact is not to the credit of his countrymen, that two 
editions sufficed for more than a century. The first 
was faithfully published from the original manuscript, 
in 1716, by Dr. John Jeffery, Archdeacon of Norwich; 
the second in 1756, by Dr. Samuel Johnson ; who en- 
riched it with a life of the author and some short ex- 

* The more we read the more perplext, 
The comment ruining the text. 

The few notes which will be found in this edition of religio hedici and 
CHRISTIAN MORALS are the author's own. 



EDITOR S PREFACE. XI 

planatory notes. For the next we are indebted to Mr. 
Wilkin in 1835.* 

Although the greater part of this work is preceptive, 
yet in some of its later sections the meek and vene- 
rable man doffs the teacher's gown, and gives us again 
glimpses of that sweet character which he had in part 
unveiled before, and whose entire disclosure makes this 
piece of mental biography one of the most curious and 
interesting books in our language. The twenty-second 
section (the longest in christian morals) is irresistibly 
touching when viewed in this personal light; and it will 
be difficult to see it in any other, if with the opening 
words " In seventy or eighty years a man may have a 
deep gust of the world," we combine the recollection 
that he who wrote them was then between seventy and 
eighty years of age. 

There is another passage among the outpourings of 
this more stately Montaigne which I can never read 
without applying the close of it to himself, although he 
whom the compellation of little Jlock did deject on ac- 
count of his own unworthiness, may have thought of no 
one less than of himself when it dropt from his pen : — 
'* Though human souls are said to be equal, yet is there 
no small inequality in their operations ; some maintain 
the allowable station of men, many are far below it ; 
and some have been so divine as to approach the apo- 

GEUM of their NATURES, AND TO BE IN THE CONFINIUM OF 

spirits."! 

In lieu of the accompaniments withheld from the 
present edition of religio medici others are substituted 

* It is printed in the fourth volume of his edition of Sir Thomas 
Browne's Works, religio medici appears in the second, 
t See pp. 182, 167. 



XU EDITOR S PREFACE. 

whose Utility it is hoped may not be questioned. Neither 
that work nor its sequel christian morals is severely 
methodical : it is the more desirable therefore that the 
substance of the several divisions of each should be in- 
dicated, that the reader might be put in possession of a 
brief abstract of the volume by which he may be en- 
abled to recur to particular portions of it with facility. 
The editor has adhered in these tables to the language 
of his author; but it was often found difficult (and 
sometimes impossible) to express in a line or two the 
contents of sections so laden with thought as those of 
Sir Thomas Browne. 

They are likewise studded with forcible and remark- 
able words, which may perhaps be advantageously 
pointed out by an Index. That which has been pre- 
pared is not confined to peculiar and uncommon terms, 
but embraces familiar ones whenever they are employed 
in a peculiar sense or in some unwonted construction. 
One of the chief advantages of a dictionary may be 
said to lie in the examples it atTords of the sense in 
which words have been used by the best writers. As 
this adjunct of the present edition will lead to a great 
number of striking passages in these Contemplations 
which have not been adduced either by Dr. Johnson or 
Mr. Richardson, it may be found to serve as an exem- 
plary supplement to our two principal lexicographers. 
Probably none who have felt the comfort of a full index, 
or the misery of a lank one, will be inclined to murmur 
at the somewhat unusual copiousness of that which is 
here offered to their acceptance. 

Like most writers of his time Sir Thomas Browne 
was capricious or careless in regard to orthography. 
That of the two lexicographers just mentioned has 



EDITORS PREFACE. Xlll 

therefore been followed, whose agreement upon this 
point seems to offer at length a convenient and desirable 
standard whereby to regulate what was once so tor- 
mentingly precarious. 

Few men with a pen in their hand are more inno- 
cently employed than he who is engaged in re-editing 
a good old book. It may save him perchance from 
adding a new and needless one to the swarms already 
existing " that serve only to distract weaker judgments, 
and to maintain the trade and mystery of typogra- 
phers."* The pleasant task which I have just accom- 
plished has brought its own reward by making me 
better acquainted with this volume of up-raising ethicks. 
If I should be instrumental in causing it to be more 
generally read than heretofore that circumstance will 
bring with it fresh matter of grateful remembrance. 

John Peace. 

City Library, Bristol, 

New Year's Day, 1844. 

* Rel. Med. p. 46. Or it may be a safe way of adopting, without 
arrogancy, the counsel of Lord Bacon : — " For the opinion of plenty is 
among the causes of want, and the great quantity of books maketh a 
show rather of superfluity than lack ; which surcharge, nevertheless, is 
not to be remedied by making no more books, but by making more good 
books, which as the serpent of Moses might devour the serpents of the 
enchanters," — Advancement of Learning, book ii. 



CONTENTS. 

RELIGIO MEDICI. Part. I. 

Sect. I. The author a Christian ----- 25 

II. Of the reformed religion ----- 26 

III. Charitably disposed to the un-reformed - - - 26 

IV. But not hopeful of reconcilement - - - - 28 
V. A sworn subject to the faith of the church of 

England 28 

VI. Having no genius to disputes in religion. Follow- 
ing to wheel of the church 30 

VII. His greener studies polluted with two or three 

heresies 32 

VIII. In doctrines heretical there will be super-heresies 33 
IX. Wingy mysteries in divinity. Nourish an active 

faith 34 

X. Content to understand them without a rigid defini- 
tion ; by an adumbration ----- 35 
XI. Eternity of God. ' With this I confound my under- 
standing' 36 

XII. Trinity. The visible world a picture of the in- 
visible 37 

XIII. Wisdom of God. ' With this attribute I recreate 

my devotion' -------38 

XIV. But one first cause. Every essence hath its final 

cause 41 

XV. Natura niliil agit frustra. Wisdom seen in all 

things ---41 



XVI CONTENTS. 

XVI. Two books from whence I collect my divinity. 

Nature is the art of God - - - - 42 
XVII. Cryptic and involved method of Providence. All 

obey the swing of that wheel - - - 45 
XVIII. Fortune (like nature) a relative term. No effect 

but hath its warrant ... - - 46 
XIX. Second causes perversely commented on. Con- 
spiracy of passion and reason against faith - 48 
XX. Atheism. There was never any - - - 50 
XXI. Credulous disbelievers. Niceties that become us 

not. Solved by ' a divine concourse' - - 51 
XXII. Other niceties, of an easy and possible truth - 53 

XXIII. The Bible the only work too hard for the teeth of 

time --------55 

XXIV. Too many books in the world - - - - 56 
XXV. Obstinacy of the Jews. Inconstancy of Christians. 

Persecution ------ 57 

XXVI. All that suffer in matters of religion not martyrs. 

It may be homicide ----- 59 

XXVIl. Miracles : equal. To create nature as great a 

miracle as to contradict or transcend her - 60 

XXVIII. Reliques. Their efficacy to be suspected - 61 
XXIX. Cessation of oracles. Uncertainty of human 

history - 62 

XXX. Spirits and witches. Power of evil spirits - 62 
XXXI. Traditional magic. Courteous revelations of good 

spirits -.-.---64 

XXXII. Spirit of God. Invocated .... 64 

X XXIII. Tutelary and guardian angels . - - - 66 

XXXIV. Man a microcosm, or little world - - - 68 
XXXV. The immaterial world. Creation. Inorganity of 

the soul 69 

XXXVI. The whole creation a mystery : man particularly 70 

XXXVII. All flesh is grass. The soul outlives death by its 

proper nature : without a miracle - - 72 

XXXVIII. Death should not amaze a Christian - - 73 

XXXIX. In this world we manifest our divinity but ob- 
scurely ..-----74 



CONTENTS. XVU 

XL. Naturally bashful ; yet not so much afraid of death 

as ashamed thereof ----- 75 

XLI. Unanxious for fame. The world but a dream or 

mock show -------76 

XLII. Age doth not rectify, but incurvate our natures 77 
XLIII. Some other hand than that of nature twines the 

thread of life ------ 78 

XLIV. We are happier with death than we should have 

been without it 79 

XLV. To be immortal, die daily. Judicial proceeding at 

last day] 81 

XLVI. To settle the period of the world, impiety. Anti- 
christ the philosopher's stone in divinity - 82 
XLVII. The resurrection the life and spirit of all our 

actions -------84 

XLVIII. How shall the dead arise 1 Types of the resurrec- 
tion to be found in nature - - - - 85 

XLIX. Heaven. To define it (or hell) surpasseth my 

divinity 86 

L. LI. Hell. The heart of man the place the devils 

dwell in 88 

LH. Never afraid of hell. The servant, not the slave 

of the Almighty 90 

LIIL Life an abyss and mass of mercies. God better 

to the worst than the best deserve - - 91 
LIV. All salvation through Christ - • - - 92 
LV. Our practice runs counter to our theory. We are 

all monsters - 93 

LVL Church of God narrowed. We go to heaven 

against each other's will - - - - 95 

LVn. Many saved who to man seem reprobated ; and 

contrarily -------96 

LVIII. " The compellation of ' little flock' doth deject 

my devotion" 96 

LIX. Yet I doubt not of my salvation through the 

mercy of God 97 

LX. Who deny good works yet challenge heaven by 

the efficacy of their faith - - - - 97 
•2* 



XVlll CONTENTS. 

Part II. 

I. Charity : without it faith a mere notion. Naturally 

framed to it, having no antipathies ; contemn 
nothing but the multitude. A rabble among the 
gentry, a nobility without heraldry - - - 99 

II. Proper motives of charity. A phytognomy or phy- 

siognomy of plants and animals. Chiromancy. 
Difference effaces ------ 101 

III. The act of charity hath many branches. Nakedness 

of the soul to be apparelled. Controversies need 
not passion. Merciless pens - - - - 104 

IV. Uncharity to whole nations. The community of sin 

doth not disparage goodness. Self-love. Hard to 
judge others, since no man knows himself - - 106 
V. Unselfishness. Sympathy. Friendship ; its powerful- 
ness. Three mystical unions : two natures in one 
person ; three persons in one nature ; one soul in 
two bodies --. 108 

VI. Wonders in true affection : the soul its object. To 

pray for our enemies no harsh precept - - 110 

VII. No such injury as revenge ; no such revenge as con- 
tempt of an injury. Man a mass of antipathies. 
Charity to ourselves to be at variance with our 

vices Ill 

VIII. Father-sin of pride escaped. A common and school 
philosophy for tlie reason of others ; a reserved and 
experimental for mine own. Vanity of toiling for 
the knowledge which death gives every fool gratis 113 

IX. Marriage. Harmony : an hieroglyphical and shadowed 
lesson of the whole creation. Incurables in physic, 
law, divinity. No catholicon but death - - 115 
X. No man bad. Poisons contain their own antidote. 
' Lord defend me from myself,' part of my litany. 
Nothing truly alone but God - - - - 118 

XI. My life a miracle of thirty years. Dreams. Are we 
not all asleep 1 and the conceits of tliis life mere 
dreams to those of the next . . - . 120 
XII. Sleep. Bedward dormative 122 



CONTENTS. XIX 

XIII. Avarice a deplorable piece of madness, beyond the 

power of hellebo^. We may be liberal without 
wealth. Poor men may build hospitals, and erect 
cathedrals. Purblind statists - - . - 123 

XIV. Charity ; to love God for himself, and our neighbour 

for God. All that we truly love is invisible - 125 
XV. No felicity in that the world adores. No happiness 

but in obedience. Thy will be done ! - - 126 



CHRISTIAN MORALS. Part I. 

I. Pursue virtue virtuously - . - - . 133 

II. A triumph (not ovation) over thy passions - - 134 

III. Chastity. Adjourn not this virtue - - - - 134 

IV. Be temperate to serve God better - - - - 134 
V. Charity. Diffuse thy beneficence early - - - 135 

VI. Charity. Give largely, widely .... 135 

VII. Avaricious men live but unto one world - - - 136 

VIII. The covetous merciless to themselves . - - 136 

IX. Be grained in virtue ; not lightly dipt . - - 137 

X. Plain virtue. Have no by-ends .... 137 

XI. Law of thy country not the non ultra of thy honesty 13S 

XII. Morality not ambulatory. No new ethics - - 138 

XIII. Envy, an absurd depravity 138 

XIV. Humility, owe not to humiliation ... - 139 
XV. Forgiveness to be total 139 

XVI. Charity the crowning grace ----- 140 

XVII. Fasten the rudder of thy will. Steer straight unto 

good 140 

XVIII. Bid early defiance to thy rooted vices - - - 141 
XIX. Be substantially great : thine own monarch - - 141 

XX. Be deaf to calumniators : they relieve the devils - 142 

XXI. Annihilate not God's mercies by ingratitude - - 143 

XXII. Conscience will shorten the great assize - - 143 

XXIII. Flattery is a juggler. Fall not into self-adulation - 144 

XXIV. Study the dominion of thyself - . . - 145 
XXV. The hand of Providence. Fortune hath no name in 

Sacred Scripture 145 



XX CONTENTS. 

XXVI. Be content though poor. Yet fall not into affectation 

of bravery ..--.-- 146 

XXVII. Content may dwell in all stations - - - 147 
XXVIII. Dross in all human tempers; but nothmg totally 

bad 14S 

XXIX. Overlook not the mercies often bound up in adver- 
sities ... 149 

XXX. Pass not the Rubicon of sin. Merciful interven- 
tions may recal us 149 

XXXI. Men and women. Confound not their distinctions 150 
XXXII. Rest not under the merits of thy ancestors : shine 

by thy own ' - - 150 

XXXIII. Dull not away thy days in sloth. Tediousness of 

doing nothing 151 

XXXIV. Busy not thy best member in the encomium of thy- 

self 152 

XXXV. Modesty preventeth a multitude of sins. Be 

thankful for honest parents .... 152 
XXXVI. Soldiery : their heroical vein. The English gen- 
tleman 153 

Part II. 

I. Glut not thyself with pleasure. The strength of 

delight is in its seldomness - - - . 154 
II. Zoilism. Human lapses not to be too strictly 

judged 155 

III. Avoid dogmatism : let well weighed considerations 

guide - - - _ 156 

IV. Natural parts and good judgments rule the world 157 
V. Swell not the leaves of learning by fruitless repe- 
titions 1.58 

VI. Despair not of better things whereof there is yet no 

prospect ....... 159 

VII. Speckled face of honesty in the world - - - ItO 
VIII. Weigh not thyself in the scales of thy own opinion. 

Self-conceit a fallacy of high content - - 161 
IX. Physiognomy. Schemes of look .... 162 

X. Court not felicity too far. It sharpens affliction - 163 



CONTENTS. XXI 

XL Ponder the acts of Providence. Judgment on 

others, our monitions 164 

XII. Good natured persons best founded for heaven - 165 
\XIII. To learn to die, better than to study the ways of 
' dying - .- • - - - - 166 

Part III. 

T. No one age exemplary. The world early bad - 169 
II. He honours God who imitates him _ . - 170 

III. Embrace not the blind side of opinions - - 171 

IV. To be virtuous by epitome be firm to the principles 

of goodness - - 171 

V. Guide not the hand of God. Repine not at the 

good of others ..---- 172 
VI. Grain not vicious stains which virtuous washes 

might expunge 173 

VII. Fatalism. Burden not the stars with thy faults - 174 
VIII. Let every division of life be happy in its proper 

virtues -------- 175 

IX. Be able to be alone 175 

X. The whole world a phylactery : wisdom of God in 

every thing we see 177 

XL Think not to find heaven on earth : true beatitude 

groweth not here 178 

XII. Revenge ; feminine manhood. If no mercy for 

others, be not cruel to thyself - . . 179 

XIII. Study prophecies when they are become histories 180 

XIV. Live unto the dignity of thy nature - . - 181 

XV. The vices we scoff at in others, laugh at us within 

ourselves .-.-... 182 

XVI. Forget not tlie wheel of things, but beat not thy 

brains to foreknow them - . - . 183 

XVII. Ingratitude, degenerous vice ! - - - - 184 
XVIIL Virtue of taciturnity 185 

XIX. Oaths. Honest men's words Stygian oaths - - 185 
XX. Personate only thyself Let veracity be thy virtue 

in words, manners and actions . - - 186 



XXll CONTENTS. 

XXI. Labour in the ethicks of faith ; not in old high- 
strained paradoxes .... - 187 
XXII. In seventy or eighty years one may have a curt 

epitome of the whole course of time - - 187 

XXIII. Elysium of a virtuously-composed mind. Forget 

not the capital end of living - - - - 189 

XXIV. Inequalities of this world will be righted in the 

world to come 190 

XXV. The great advantage of this life, that it is exordial 

to a better -.--.-- 191 
XXVI. That the last flames are deferred, owing to the lon- 
ganimity of God 192 

XXVII. Wishes of good men for the world's bettering - 193 
XXVIII. The world seems in its wane .... 194 
XXIX. The world a parenthesis in eternity. Parallelisms 

in different ages - - - - - -194 

I XXX. Join both lives together, and live in one but for the 
other 195 



Kciigio illcMd* 



! 



RELIGIO MEDICI. 



I. For my religion, though there be several circum- 
stances that might persuade the world I have none at 
all, as the general scandal of my profession, the natural 
course of my studies, the indifFerency of my behaviour 
and discourse in matters of religion, neither violently 
defending one, nor with that common ardour and con- 
tention opposing another ; yet in despite hereof I dare, 
without usurpation, assume the honourable style of a 
Christian. Not that I merely owe this title to the font, 
my education, or clime wherein I was born, as being 
bred up either to confirm those principles my parents 
instilled into my unwary understanding, or by a gene- 
ral consent proceed in the religion of my country; but 
having in my riper years and confirmed judgment seen 
and examined all, I find myself obliged by the princi- 
ples of grace, and the law of mine own reason, to 
embrace no other name but this : neither doth herein 
my zeal so far make me forget the general charity I 
owe unto humanity, as rather to hate than pity Turks, 
Infidels, and (what is worse) Jews; rather contenting 
myself to enjoy that happy style, than maligning those 
who refuse so glorious a title. 

3 



26 RELIGIO MEDICI. 

II. But because the name of a Christian is become 
too general to express our faith, there being a geogra- 
phy of rehgion as well as lands, and every clime dis- 
tinguished not only by their laws and limits, but cir- 
cumscribed by their doctrines and rules of faith ; to be 
particular, I am of that reformed new-cast religion, 
wherein I dislike nothing but the name ; of the same 
belief our Saviour taught, the apostles disseminated, 
the fathers authorized, and the martyrs confirmed ; 
but by the sinister ends of princes, the ambition and 
avarice of prelates, and the fatal corruption of times, 
so decayed, impaired, and fallen from its native beauty, 
that it required the careful and charitable hand of these 
times to restore it to its primitive integrity. Now the 
accidental occasion whereupon, the slender means 
whereby, the low and abject condition of the person 
by whom so good a work was set on foot, which in 
our adversaries beget contempt and scorn, fills me with 
wonder, and is the very same objection the insolent 
pagans first cast at Christ and his disciples. 

III. Yet have I not so shaken hands with those des- 
perate resolutions, who had rather venture at large 
their decayed bottom than bring her in to be new 
trimmed in the dock ; who had rather promiscuously 
retain all than abridge any, and obstinately be what 
they are than what they have been, as to stand in dia- 
meter and sword's point with them : we have reformed 
from them, not against them ; for omitting those impro- 
perations and terms of scurrility betwixt us, which only 
difference our affections, and not our cause, there is be- 
tween us one common name and appellation, one faith 
and necessary body of principles common to us both ; 
and therefore I am not scrupulous to converse and live 



RELIGIO MEDICI. 27 

with them, to enter their churches in defect of ours, 
and either pray with them, or for them. I could never 
perceive any rational consequence from those many 
texts which prohibit the children of Israel to pollute 
themselves with the temples of the heathens ; we being 
all Christians, and not divided by such detested im- 
pieties as might profane our prayers, or the place 
wherein we make them ; or that a resolved conscience 
may not adore her Creator any where, especially in 
places devoted to his service ; where if their devotions 
offend him, mine may please him, if theirs profane it, 
mine may hallow it. Holy-water and crucifix (dan- 
gerous to the common people) deceive not my judg- 
ment, nor abuse my devotion at all: I am, I confess, 
naturally inclined to that which misguided zeal terms 
superstition; my common conversation I do acknow- 
ledge austere, my behaviour full of rigour, sometimes 
not without morosity ; yet at my devotion I love to use 
the civility of my knee, my hat, and hand, with all 
those outward and sensible motions which may express 
or promote my invisible devotion. I should violate my 
own arm rather than a church, nor willingly deface the 
name of saint or martyr. At the sight of a cross or 
crucifix I can dispense with my hat, but scarce with 
the thought or memory of my Saviour ; I cannot laugh 
at, but rather pity the fruitless journeys of pilgrims, or 
contemn the miserable condition of friars ; for though 
misplaced in circumstance, there is something in it of 
devotion. I could never hear the Ave-Mary bell* with- 

* A church bell that tolls every day at six and twelve of the clock ; at 
the hearing whereof every one in what place soever, either of house or 
street, betakes himself to his prayer, which is commonly directed to the 
Virgin. 



28 RELIGIO MEDICI. 

out an elevation, or think it a sufficient warrant, be- 
cause they erred in one circumstance, for me to 6i"r in 
all, that is, in silence and dumb contempt ; whilst there- 
fore they directed their devotions to her, I offered mine 
to God, and rectified the errours of their prayers by 
rightly ordering mine own : at a solemn procession I 
have wept abundantly, while my consorts, blind with 
opposition and prejudice, have fallen into an access of 
scorn and laughter. There are questionless both in 
Greek, Roman, and African churches, solemnities and 
ceremonies whereof the wiser zeals do make a Chris- 
tian use, and stand condemned by us, not as evil in 
themselves, but as allurements and baits of superstition 
to those vulgar heads that look asquint on the face of 
truth, and those unstable judgments that cannot consist 
in the narrow point and centre of virtue without a reel 
or stagger to the circumference. 

IV. As there were many reformers, so likewise many 
reformations ; every country proceeding in a particular 
way and method, according as their national interest, 
together with their constitution and clime inclined them ; 
some angrily and with extremity, others calmly and 
with mediocrity, not rending but easily dividing the 
community, and leaving an honest possibility of a re- 
conciliation ; which though peaceable spirits do desire, 
and may conceive that revolution of time and the mer- 
cies of God may effect, yet that judgment that shall 
consider the present antipathies between the two ex- 
tremes, their contrarieties in condition, affection, and 
opinion, may with the same hopes expect an union in 
the poles of heaven. 

V. But to difference myself nearer, and draw into a 
lesser circle ; there is no church whose every part so 



RELIGIO MEDICI. 29 

squares unto my conscience, whose articles, constitu- 
tions, and customs seem so consonant unto reason, and 
as it were framed to my particular devotion, as this 
whereof I hold my belief, the Church of England ; to 
whose faith I am a sworn subject, and therefore in a 
double obligation subscribe unto her articles, and en- 
deavour to observe her constitutions; whatsoever is 
beyond, as points indifferent, I observe according to the 
rules of my private reason, or the humour or fashion of 
my devotion ; neither believing this, because Luther 
affirmed it, or disapproving that, because Calvin hath 
disavouched it. I condemn not all things in the council 
of Trent, nor approve all in the synod of Dort. In 
brief, where the Scripture is silent the church is my 
text ; where that speaks, 'tis but my comment ; where 
there is a joint silence of both, I borrow not the rules 
of my religion from Rome or Geneva, but the dictates 
of mine own reason. It is an unjust scandal of our ad- 
versaries, and a gross errour in ourselves, to compute 
the nativity of our religion from Henry the Eighth, 
who though he rejected the pope, refused not the faith 
of Rome, and efiected no more than what his own pre- 
decessors desired and assayed in ages past, and 'twas 
conceived the state of Venice would have attempted in 
our days. It is as uncharitable a point in us to fall 
upon those popular scurrilities and opprobrious scoffs 
of the Bishop of Rome, to whom as a temporal prince 
we owe the duty of good language. I confess there is 
a cause of passion between us ; by his sentence I stand 
excommunicated, heretic is the best language he affords 
me ; yet can no ear witness I ever returned to him the 
name of antichrist, man of sin, or whore of Babylon. 
It is the method of charity to suffer without reaction ; 

3* 



30 EELIGIO MEDICI. 

those usual satires, and invectives of the pulpit may 
perchance produce a good effect on the vulgar, whose 
ears are opener to rhetorick than logick ; yet do they in 
no vi^ise confirm the faith of wiser believers, who know 
that a good cause needs not to be patroned by a passion, 
but can sustain itself upon a temperate dispute. 

VI. I could never divide myself from any man upon 
the difference of an opinion, or be angry with his judg- 
ment for not agreeing with me in that from which per- 
haps within a few days I should dissent myself. I have 
no genius to disputes in religion, and have often thought 
it wisdom to decline them, especially upon a disadvan- 
tage, or when the cause of truth might suffer in the 
weakness of my patronage : where we desire to be in- 
formed 'tis good to contest with men above ourselves ; 
but to confirm and establish our opinions 'tis best to 
argue with judgments below our own, that the frequent 
spoils and victories over their reasons may settle in 
ourselves an esteem and confirmed opinion of our own. 
Every man is not a proper champion for truth, nor fit 
to take up the gauntlet in the cause of verity ; many, 
from the ignorance of these maxims, and an incon- 
siderate zeal unto truth, have too rashly charged the 
troops of errour, and remain as trophies unto the enemies 
of truth. A man may be in as just possession of truth 
as of a city, and yet be forced to surrender ; 'tis there- 
fore far better to enjoy her with peace, than to hazard 
her on a battle : if therefore there rise any doubts in 
my way I do forget them, or at least defer them, till 
my better settled judgment and more manly reason be 
able to resolve them ; for I perceive every man's own 
reason is his best CEdipus, and will upon a reasonable 
truce find a way to loose those bonds wherewith the 



RELIGIO MEDICI. 31 

subtleties of errour have enchained our more flexible and 
tender judgnaents. In philosophy, where truth seems 
double faced, there is no man more paradoxical than 
myself; but in divinity I love to keep the road ; and 
though not in an implicit, yet an humble faith, follow 
the great wheel of the church, by which I move, not 
reserving any proper poles or motion from the epicycle 
of my own brain : by this means I leave no gap for 
heresy, schisms, or errours, of which at present 1 hope I 
shall not injure truth to say I have no taint or tincture. 
I must confess my greener studies have been polluted 
with two or three, not any begotten in the latter cen- 
turies, but old and obsolete, such as could never have 
been revived but by such extravagant and irregular 
heads as mine ; for indeed heresies perish not with their 
authors, but like the river Arethusa, though they lose 
their currents in one place they rise up again in another. 
One general council is not able to extirpate one single 
heresy ; it may be cancelled for the present, but revolu- 
tion of time and the like aspects from heaven, will re- 
store it, when it will flourish till it be condemned again; 
for as though there were a metempsuchosis, and the 
soul of one man passed into another, opinions do find 
after certain revolutions, men and minds like those that 
first begat them. To see ourselv'es again we need not 
look for Plato's year.* Eveiy man is not only himself; 
there have been many Diogenes, and as many Timons, 
though but few of that name ; men are lived over again, 
the world is now as it was in ages past; there was none 



* A revolution of certain thousand years, when all things should re- 
turn unto their former estate, and he be teaching again in his school as 
when he delivered this opinion. 



32 RELIGIO MEDICI. 

then but there hath been some one since that parallels 
him, and is as it were his revived self. 

VII. Now the first of mine was that of the Arabians, 
that the souls of men perished with their bodies, but 
should yet be raised again at the last day : not that I 
did absolutely conceive a mortality of the soul; but 
if that were, which faith, not philosophy, hath yet 
throughly disproved, and that both entered the grave 
together, yet I held the same conceit thereof that we 
all do of the body, that it should rise again. Surely it 
is but the merits of our unworthy natures, if we sleep 
in darkness until the last alarum : a serious reflex upon 
my own unworthiness did make me backward from 
challenging this prerogative of my soul; so I might 
enjoy my Saviour at the last, I could with patience be 
nothing almost unto eternity. The second was that of 
Origen ; that God would not persist in his vengeance 
for ever, but after a definite time of his wrath he would 
release the damned souls from torture : which errour I 
fell into upon a serious contemplation of the great at- 
tribute of God his Mercy ; and did a little cherish it in 
myself, because I found therein no malice, and a ready 
weight to sway me from the other extreme of despair, 
whereunto melancholy and contemplative natures are 
too easily disposed. A third there is which I did never 
positively maintain or practise, but have often wished it 
had been consonant to truth and not oflensive to my re- 
ligion, and that is the prayer for the dead ; whereunto 
I was inclined from some charitable inducements, 
whereby I could scarce contain my prayers for a 
friend at the ringing of a bell, or behold his corpse 
without an oraison for his soul : 'twas a good way me- 
thought to be remembered by posterity, and far more 



K.ELIGIO MEDICI. 33 

noble than an history. These opinions I never main- 
tained with pertinacity, or endeavoured to inveigle any 
man's belief unto mine, nor so much as ever revealed 
or disputed them with my dearest friends ; by which 
means I neither propagated them in others, nor con- 
firmed them in myself, but suffering them to flame upon 
their own substance without addition of new fuel, they 
went out insensibly of themselves : therefore these 
opinions, though condemned by lawful councils, were 
not heresies in me, but bare errours, and single lapses of 
my understanding without a joint depravity of my will. 
Those have not only depraved understandings, but dis- 
eased affections, which cannot enjoy a singularity with- 
out a heresy, or be the author of an opinion without 
they be of a sect also ; this was the villany of the first 
schism of Lucifer, who was not content to err alone, 
but drew into his faction many legions of spirits ; and 
upon this experience he tempted only Eve, as well un- 
derstanding the communicable nature of sin, and that 
to deceive but one was tacitly and upon consequence 
to delude them both. 

VIII. That heresies should arise we have the pro- 
phecy of Christ ; but that old ones should be abolished 
we hold no prediction. That there must be heresies, is 
true, not only in our church, but also in any other; 
even in doctrines heretical there will be super-heresies ; 
and Arians not only divided from their church, but also 
among themselves : for heads that are disposed unto 
schism and complexionably propense to innovation, are 
naturally indisposed for a community, nor will ever be 
confined unto the order or economy of one body ; and 
therefore when they separate from others they knit but 
loosely among themselves ; nor contented with a gene- 



34 RELIGIO MEDICI. 

ral breach or dichotomy with their church, do subdi- 
vide and mince themselves almost into atoms. 'Tis 
true, that men of singular parts and humours have not 
been free from singular opinions and conceits in all 
ages ; retaining something not only beside the opinion 
of their own church or any other, but also any particu- 
lar author ; which, notwithstanding, a sober judgment 
may do without offence or heresy; for there is yet, 
after all the decrees of councils and the niceties of the 
schools, many things untoucht, unimagined, wherein 
the liberty of an honest reason may play and expatiate 
with security, and far without the circle of an heresy. 

IX. As for those wingy mysteries in divinity and 
airy subtleties in religion, which have unhinged the 
brains of better heads, they never stretched the pia- 
mater of mine ; methinks there be not impossibilities 
enough in religion, for an active faith; the deepest 
mysteries ours contains, have not only been illustrated, 
but maintained by syllogism and the rule of reason : I 
love to lose myself in a mystery, to pursue my reason 
to an altitudo ! 'Tis my solitary recreation to pose 
my apprehension with those involved enigmas and rid- 
dles of the Trinity, with incarnation and resurrection. 
I can answer all the objections of Satan and my rebel- 
lious reason with that odd resolution I learned of Ter- 
tullian, certum est quia im-possihile est. I desire to ex- 
ercise my faith in the difficultest point ; for to credit 
ordinary and visible objects is not faith, but persuasion. 
Some believe the better for seeing Christ's sepulchre, 
and when they have seen the Red Sea, doubt not of the 
miracle. Now contrarily I bless myself, and am thank- 
ful that I lived not in the days of miracles, that I never 
saw Christ nor his disciples; I would not have been 



RELIGIO MEDICI. 35 

one of those Israelites that passed the Red Sea, nor one 
of Christ's patients on wliom he wrought his wonders ; 
then had my faith been thrust upon me, nor should I 
enjoy that greater blessing pronounced to all that be- 
lieve and saw not. 'Tis an easy and necessary belief 
to credit what our eye and sense hath examined ; I be- 
lieve he was dead and buried, and rose again ; and 
desire to see him in his glory, rather than to contem- 
plate him in his cenotaph, or sepulchre. Nor is this 
much to believe ; as we have reason, we owe this faith 
unto history : they only had the advantage of a bold 
and noble faith, who lived before his coming, who upon 
obscure prophecies and mystical types could raise a 
belief, and expect apparent impossibilities. 

X. 'Tis true there is an edge in all firm belief, and 
with an easy metaphor we may say the sword of faith ; 
but in these obscurities I rather use it in the adjunct the 
apostle gives it, a buckler ; under which I conceive a 
wary combatant may lie invulnerable. Since I was of 
understanding to know we know nothing, my reason 
hath been more pliable to the will of faith ; I am now 
content to understand a mystery without a rigid defini- 
tion, in an easy and Platonick description. That alle- 
gorical description of Hermes* pleaseth me beyond all 
the metaphysical definitions of divines ; where I cannot 
satisfy my reason I love to humour my fancy : I had as 
lieve you tell me that anima est angeAus hominis, est 
corpus Dei, as entelechia ; lux est umbra Dei, as actus 
perspicui ; where there is an obscurity too deep for our 
reason, 'tis good to sit down with a description, peri- 
phrasis, or adumbration ; for by acquainting our reason 

* Sphaera, cujus centrum ubique, circumferentia nullibi. 



36 RELIGIO MEDICI. 

how imable it is to display the visible and obvious effects 
of nature, it becomes more humble and submissive unto 
'the subtleties of faith ; and thus I teach my haggard and 
unreclaimed reason to stoop unto the lure of faith. I 
believe there was already a tree whose fruit our un- 
happy parents tasted, though in the same chapter, when 
God forbids it, 'tis positively said the plants of the field 
were not yet grown ; for God had not caused it to rain 
upon the earth. I believe that the serpent (if we shall 
literally understand it) from his proper form and figure 
made his motion on his belly before the curse. I find 
the trial of the pucellage and virginity of womep, 
which God ordained the Jews, is very fallible. Ex- 
perience, and history informs me, that not only many 
particular women, but likewise whole nations have es- 
caped the curse of childbirth, which God seems to pro- 
nounce upon the whole sex ; yet do I believe that all 
this is true, which indeed my reason would persuade 
me to be false ; and this 1 think is no vulgar part of 
faith, to believe a thing not only above, but contrary to 
reason, and against the arguments of our proper senses. 
XI. In my solitary and retired imagination, 

(Neque enim, cum lectulus, aut me 
Porticus excepit, desum mihi,) 

I remember I am not alone, and therefore forget not to 
contemplate him and his attributes who is ever with 
me, especially those two mighty ones, his wisdom and 
eternity ; with the one I recreate, with the other I con- 
found my understanding : for who can speak of eternity 
without a solecism, or think thereof without an ecstacy? 
Time we may comprehend, 'tis but five days elder than 



RELIGIO MEDICI. 37 

ourselves, and hath the same horoscope with the world ; 
but to retire so far back as to apprehend a beginning, 
to give such an infinite start forwards as to conceive 
an end in an essence that we affirm hath neither the 
one nor the other, it puts my reason to St. Paul's sanc- 
tuary ; my philosophy dares not say the angels can do 
it ; God hath not made a creature that can comprehend 
him, 'tis the privilege of his own nature. I am that I 
am, was his own definition unto Moses ; and 'twas a 
short one to confound mortality, that durst question 
God, or ask him what he was ; indeed he only is ; all 
others have and shall be, but in eternity there is no dis- 
tinction of tenses ; and therefore that terrible term, pre- 
destination, which hath troubled so many weak heads 
to conceive, and the wisest to explain, is in respect to 
God no prescious determination of our estates to come, 
but a definite blast of his will already fulfilled, and at 
the instant that he first decreed it ; for to his eternity, 
which is indivisible and all together, the last trump is 
already sounded, the reprobates in the flame, and the 
blessed in Abraham's bosom. St. Peter speaks mo- 
destly when he saith, a thousand years to God are but 
as one day ; for to speak like a philosopher, those con- 
tinued instances of time which flow into a thousand 
years, make not to him one moment ; what to us is to 
come, to his eternity is present, his whole duration 
being but one permanent point without succession, 
parts, flux, or division. 

XII. There is no attribute that adds more difficulty 
to the mystery of the Trinity, where, though in a rela- 
tive way of Father and Son, we must deny a priority. 
I wonder how Aristotle could conceive the world eter- 
nal, or how he could make good two eternities; his 

4 



38 RELIGIO MEDICI. 

similitude of a triangle comprehended in a square, doth 
somewhat illustrate the trinity of our souls, and that the 
triple unity of God ; for there is in us not three, but a 
trinity of souls, because there is in us, if not three dis- 
tinct souls, yet differing faculties, that can and do sub- 
sist apart in different subjects, and yet in us are so 
united as to make but one soul and substance : if one 
soul were so perfect as to inform three distinct bodies, 
that were a petty trinity ; conceive the distinct number 
of three, not divided nor separated by the intellect, but 
actually comprehended in its unity, and that is a perfect 
trinity. I have often admired the mystical way of Py- 
thagoras, and the secret magick of numbers ; beware of 
philosophy, is a precept not to be received in too large 
a sense; for in this mass of nature there is a set of 
things that carry in their front, though not in capital 
letters yet in stenography and short characters, some- 
thing of divinity, which to wiser reasons serve as lumi- 
naries in the abyss of knowledge, and to judicious 
beliefs, as scales and roundles to mount the pinnacles 
and highest pieces of divinity. The severe schools 
shall never laugh me out of the philosophy of Hermes, 
that this visible world is but a picture of the invisible, 
wherein as in a portrait, things are not truly, but in 
equivocal shapes, and as they counterfeit some more 
real substance in that invisible fabrick. 
'-• XIII. That other attribute wherewith I recreate my 
devotion, is his wisdom, in which I am happy ; and for 
the contemplation of this only, do not repent me that I 
was bred in the way of study : the advantage I have of 
the vulgar, with the content and happiness I conceive 
therein, is an ample recompence for all my endeavours, 
in what part of knowledge soever. Wisdom is his 



RELIGIO MEDICI. 39 

most beauteous attribute, no man can attain unto it, yet 
Solomon pleased God when he desired it. He is wise 
because he knows all things, and he knoweth all things 
because he made them all ; but his greatest knowledge 
is in comprehending that he made not, that is, himself. 
And this is also the greatest knowledge in man. For 
this do I honour my own profession, and embrace the 
counsel even of the devil himself; had he read such a 
lecture in paradise as he did at Delphos,* we had better 
known ourselves, nor had we stood in fear to know 
him. I know he is wise in all, wonderful in what we 
conceive, but far more in what we comprehend not ; 
for we behold him but asquint, upon reflex or shadow ; 
our understanding is dimmer than Moses' eye, we are 
ignorant of the back parts or lower side of his divinity. 
Therefore to pry into the maze of his counsels, is not 
only folly in-man, but presumption even in angels; like 
us, they are his servants not his senators ; he holds no 
council but that mystical one of the Trinity, wherein 
though there be three Persons, there is but one mind, 
that decrees without contradiction ; nor needs he any, 
his actions are not begot with deliberation, his wisdom 
naturally knows what is best ; his intellect stands ready 
fraught with the superlative and purest ideas of good- 
ness ; consultation and election, which are two motions 
in us, make but one in him ; his actions springing from 
his power, at the first touch of his will. These are 
contemplations metaphysical; my humble speculations 
have another method, and are content to trace and dis- 
cover those expressions he hath left in his creatures, 
and the obvious effects of nature. There is no danger 

*TyZ^t visLUTcv. Nosce teipsum. 



40 RELIGIO MEDICI. 

to profound these mysteries, no sanctum sanctorum in 
philosophy ; the world was made to be inhabited by 
beasts, but studied and contemplated by man ; 'tis the 
debt of our reason we owe unto God, and the homage 
we pay for not being beasts ; without this the world is 
still as though it had not been, or as it was before the 
sixth day, when as yet there was not a creature that 
could conceive or say there was a world. The wisdom 
of God receives small honour from those vulgar heads 
that rudely stare about, and with a gross rusticity ad- 
mire his works ; those highly magnify him, whose judi- 
cious inquiry into his acts, and deliberate research into 
his creatures, return the duty of a devout and learned 
admiration. Therefore — 



Search while thou wilt, and let thy reason go 

To ransom truth e'en to th' abyss below ; 

Rally the scattered causes, and that line 

Which nature twists, be able to untwine ; 

It is thy Maker's will, for unto none 

But unto reason can he e'er be known. 

The devils do know thee, but those damned meteours 

Build not thy glory, but confound thy creatures. 

Teach my endeavours so thy works to read, 

That learning them, in thee I may proceed. 

Give thou my reason that instructive flight. 

Whose weary wings may on thy hands still light ; 

Teach me to soar aloft, yet ever so, 

When near the sun to stoop again below ; 

Thus shall my humble feathers safely hover, 

And though near earth, more than the heavens discover. 

And then at last, when homeward I shall drive 

Rich with the spoils of nature to my hive. 

There will I sit like that industrious fly, 

Buzzing thy praises, which shall never die 

Till death abrupts them, and succeeding glory 

Bid me go on in a more lasting story. 



REL I GIO MEDICI. 41 

And this is almost all wherein an humble creature 
may endeavour to requite, and some way to retribute 
unto his Creator ; for if not he that sayeth, Lord, Lord, 
but he that doeth the will of his Father, shall be saved, 
certainly our wills must be our performances, and our 
intents make out our actions; otherwise our pious 
labours shall find anxiety in their graves, and our best 
endeavours not hope but fear a resurrection. 

XIV. There is but one first cause, and four second 
causes of all things; some are without efficient, as God; 
others without matter, as angels ; some without form, 
as the first matter ; but every essence created or un- 
created, hath its final cause, and some positive end both 
of its essence and operation ; this is the cause I grope 
after in the works of nature, on this hangs the provi- 
dence of God: to raise so beauteous a structure as the 
world and the creatures thereof, was but his art, but 
their sundry and divided operations with their predesti- 
nated ends, are from the treasury of his wisdom, In 
the causes, nature, and affections of the eclipses of the 
sun and moon, there is most excellent speculation ; but 
to profound farther, and to contemplate a reason why 
his providence hath so disposed and ordered their mo- 
tions in that vast circle, as to conjoin and obscure each 
other, is a sweeter piece of reason and a diviner point 
of philosophy ; therefore sometimes, and in some things, 
there appears to me as much divinity in Galen his 
books de usu partium, as in Suarez' metaphysics : had 
Aristotle been as curious in the inquiry of this cause as 
he was of the other, he had not left behind him an im- 
perfect piece of philosophy, but an absolute tract of 
divinity. 

XV. JVatura nihil agit frustra, is the only indis- 

4* 



42 RELIGIO MEDICI. 

putable axiom in philosophy; there are no grotesques 
in nature, nor any thing framed to fill up empty can- 
tons, and unnecessary spaces; in the most imperfect 
creatures, and such as were not preserved in the ark, 
but having their seeds and principles in the womb of 
nature, are everywhere where the power of the sun is, 
in these is the wisdom of his hand discovered; out of 
this rank Solomon chose the object of his admiration ; 
indeed what reason may not go to school to the wis- 
dom of bees, ants, and spiders? What wise hand 
teacheth them to do what reason cannot teach us? 
Ruder heads stand amazed at those prodigious pieces 
of nature, whales, elephants, dromedaries and camels ; 
these, I confess, are the colossus and majestick pieces of 
her hand ; but in these narrow engines there is more 
curious mathematicks, and the civility of these little 
citizens more neatly sets forth the wisdom of their 
Maker. Who admires not Regio-Montanus his fly be- 
yond his eagle? or wonders not more at the operation 
of two souls in those little bodies, than but one in the 
trunk of a cedar ? I could never content my contem- 
plation with those general pieces of wonder, the flux 
and reflux of the sea, the increase of Nile, the conver- 
sion of the needle to the north; and have studied to 
match and parallel those in the more obvious and ne- 
glected pieces of nature, which without further travel 
I can do in the cosmography of myself. We carry 
with us the wonders we seek without us ; there is all 
Africa and her prodigies in us ; we are that bold and 
adventurous piece of nature, which he that studies, 
wisely learns in a compendium what others labour at 
in a divided piece and endless volume. 

XVI. Thus there are two books from whence I col- 



RELIGIO MEDICI. 43 

lect my divinity; besides that written one of God, 
another of his servant nature, that universal and publick 
manuscript that Hes expansed unto the eyes of all ; those 
that never saw him in the one have discovered him in 
the other : this was the scripture and theology of the 
heathens ; the natural motion of the sun made them 
more admire him, than its supernatural station did the 
children of Israel ; the ordinary effect of nature wrought 
more admiration in them, than in the other all his mira- 
cles ; surely the heathens knew better how to join and 
read these mystical letters than we Christians, who cast 
a more careless eye on these common hieroglyphicks, 
and disdain to suck divinity from the flowers of nature. 
Nor do I so forget God as to adore the name of nature ; 
which I define not with the schools, the principle of 
motion and rest, but that straight and regular line, that 
settled and constant course the wisdom of God hath 
ordained the actions of his creatures, according to their 
several kinds. To make a revolution every day is the 
nature of the sun, because of that necessary course 
which God hath ordained it, from which it cannot 
swerve but by a faculty from that voice which first 
gave it motion. Now this course of nature God sel- 
dom alters or perverts, but like an excellent artist hath 
so contrived his work, that with the selfsame instru- 
ment, without a new creation, he may effect his ob- 
scurest designs. Thus he sweeteneth the water with a 
wood ; preserveth the creatures in the ark, which the 
blast of his mouth might have as easily created; for 
God is like a skilful geometrician, who when more 
easily and with one stroke of his compass he might de- 
scribe or divide a right line, had yet rather do this in a 



44 REL I GIO MEDICI. 

circle or longer way, according to the constituted and 
forelaid principles of his art ; yet this rule of his he 
doth sometimes pervert, to acquaint the world with his 
prerogative, lest the arrogancy of our reason should 
question his power and conclude he could not : and thus 
I call the effects of nature the works of God, whose 
hand and instrument she only is ; and therefore to 
ascribe his actions unto her, is to devolve the honour of 
the principal agent upon the instrument ; which if with 
reason we may do, then let our hammers rise up and 
boast they have built our houses, and our pens receive 
the honour of our writing. I hold there is a general 
beauty in the works of God, and therefore no deformity 
in any kind or species of creature whatsoever ; I can- 
not tell by what logick we call a toad, a bear, or an ele- 
phant ugly ; they being created in those outward shapes 
and figures which best expi'ess those actions of their in- 
ward forms, and having past that general visitation of 
God who saw that all that he had made was good, that 
is, conformable to his will, which abhors deformity and 
is the rule of order and beauty. There is no deformity 
but in monstrosity, wherein notwithstanding there is a 
kind of beauty, nature so ingeniously contriving the 
irregular parts as they become sometimes more re- 
markable than the principal fabrick. To speak yet 
more narrowly, there was never any thing ugly or mis- 
shapen but the chaos; wherein notwithstanding, to 
speak strictly, there was no deformity, because no 
form, nor Was it yet impregnate by the voice of God. 
Now nature is not at variance with art nor art with 
nature, they being both the servants of his providence ; 
art is the perfection of nature ; were the world now as 



RELIGIO MEDICI. 



45 



it was in the sixth day, there were yet a chaos ; nature 
hath made one world and art another. In brief, all 
things are artificial, for nature is the art of God. 

XVII. This is the ordinary and open way of his 
providence, which art and industry have in a good part 
discovered, whose effects we may foretell without an 
oracle ; to foreshow these, is not prophecy but prognos- 
tication. There is another way full of meanders and 
labyrinths, whereof the devil and spirits have no exact 
ephemerides, and that is a more particular and obscure 
method of his providence, directing the operations of 
individuals and single essences; this we call fortune, 
that serpentine and crooked line whereby he draws 
those actions his wisdom intends, in a more unknown 
and secret way. This cryptick and involved method of 
his providence have I ever admired, nor can I relate 
the history of my life, the occurrences of my days, the 
escapes of dangers and hits of chance, with a Bezo las 
Manos to fortune, or a bare gramercy to my good stars. 
Abraham might have thought the ram in the thicket 
came thither by accident; human reason would have 
said that mere chance conveyed Moses in the ark to 
the sight of Pharaoh's daughter; what a labyrinth is 
there in the story of Joseph, able to convert a stoick ! 
Surely there are in every man's life certain rubs, dou- 
blings and wrenches, which pass awhile under the effects 
of chance, but at the last well examined prove the mere 
hand of God, 'Twas not dumb chance, that to dis- 
cover the fougade or powder-plot, contriv^ed a miscar- 
riage in the letter. I like the victory of 88. the better 
for that one occurrence which our enemies imputed to 
our dishonour and the partiality of fortune, to wit, the 
tempests and contrariety of winds. King Philip did 



46 



RELIGIO MEDICI. 



not detract from the nation when he said he sent his 
armado to fight with men, and not to combat with the 
winds. Where there is a manifest disproportion be- 
tween the powers and forces of two several agents, 
upon a maxim of reason we may promise the victory 
to the superiour ; but when unexpected accidents slip in 
and unthought-of occurrences intervene, these must 
proceed from a power that owes no obedience to those 
axioms; where, as in the writing upon the wall, we 
behold the hand but see not the spring that moves it. 
The success of that petty province of Holland (of which 
the grand Segniour proudly said that if they should 
trouble him as they did the Spaniard he would send his 
men with shovels and pickaxes and throw it into the 
sea) I cannot altogether ascribe to the ingenuity and 
industry of the people, but to the mercy of God that 
hath disposed them to such a thriving genius ; and to 
the will of his providence that dispenseth her favour to 
each country in their preordinate season. All cannot 
be happy at once ; for because the glory of one state 
depends upon the ruin of another, there is a revolution 
and vicissitude of their greatness, which must obey the 
swing of that wheel not moved by intelligences, but by 
the hand of God, whereby all estates arise to their 
zenith and vertical points, according to their predesti- 
nated periods. For the lives not only of men, but of 
commonweals and the whole world, run not upon an 
helix that still enlargeth, but on a circle; where ar- 
riving to their meridian, they decline in obscurity and 
fall under the horizon again. 

XVIII. These must not therefore be named the effects 
of fortune, but in a relative way, and as we term the 
works of nature. It was the ignorance of man's rea- 



RELIGIO MEDICI. 47 

son that begat this very name, and by a careless term 
miscalled the providence of God ; for there is no liberty 
for causes to operate in a loose and straggling v^^ay, 
nor any effect whatsoever but hath its warrant from 
some universal or superiour cause. 'Tis not a ridicu- 
lous devotion to say a prayer before a game at tables ; 
for even in sortilegies and matters of greatest uncer- 
tainty, there is a settled and preordered course of 
effects. It is we that are blind, not fortune; because 
our eye is too dim to discover the mystery of her effects 
we foolishly paint her blind, and hoodwink the provi- 
dence of the Almighty. I cannot justify that con- 
temptible proverb, that fools only are fortunate; or 
that insolent paradox, that a wise man is out of the 
reach of fortune ; much less those opprobrious epithets 
of poets, whore, bawd, and strumpet. 'Tis, I confess, 
the common fate of men of singular gifts of mind to be 
destitute of those of fortune ; which doth not any way 
deject the spirit of wiser judgments, who throughly 
understand the justice of this proceeding, and being 
enriched with higher donatives cast a more careless 
eye on these vulgar parts of felicity. It is a most un- 
just ambition to desire to engross the mercies of the 
Almighty, nor to be content with the goods of mind 
without a possession of those of body or fortune : and 
it is an errour worse than heresy to adore these comple- 
mental and circumstantial pieces of felicity, and under- 
value those perfections and essential points of happiness 
wherein we resemble our Maker. To wiser desires it 
is satisfaction enough to deserve, though not to enjoy 
the favours of fortune ; let providence provide for fools ; 
'tis not partiality but equity in God, who deals with us 
but as our natural parents ; those that are able of body 



48 RELIGIO MEDICI. 

and mind, he leaves to their deserts ; to those of weaker 
merits he imparts a larger portion, and pieces out the 
defect of one by the access of the other. Thus have 
we no just quarrel with nature for leaving us naked ; or 
to envy the horns, hoofs, skins, and furs of other crea- 
tures, being provided with reason that can supply them 
all. We need not labour with so many arguments to 
confute judicial astrology, for if there be a truth therein 
it doth not injure divinity ; if to be born under Mercury 
disposeth us to be witty, under Jupiter to be wealthy, I 
do not owe a knee unto these, but unto that merciful 
hand that hath ordered my indifferent and uncertain 
nativity unto such benevolous aspects. Those that 
held that all things were governed by fortune, had not 
erred, had they not persisted there ; the Romans that 
erected a temple to fortune acknowledged therein, 
though in a blinder way, somewhat of divinity ; for in 
a wise supputation all things begin and end in the 
Almighty. There is a nearer way to heaven than 
Homer's chain ; an easy logick may conjoin heaven and 
earth in one argument, and with less than a sorites re- 
solve all things into God. For though we christen 
effects by their most sensible and nearest causes, yet is 
God the true and infallible cause of all ; whose con- 
course though it be general, yet doth it subdivide itself 
into the particular actions of every thing, and is that 
spirit by which each singular essence not only subsists 
but performs its operation. 

XIX. The bad construction and perverse comment 
on these pair of second causes, or visible hands of God, 
have perverted the devotion of many unto atheism ; 
who forgetting the honest advisoes of faith, have 
listened unto the conspiracy of passion and reason. I 



RELIGIO MEDICI. 49 

have therefore always endeavoured to compose those 
feuds and angry dissentions between affection, faith, 
and reason ; for there is in our soul a kind of triumvi- 
rate, or triple government of three competitors, which 
distract, the peace of this our commonwealth not less 
than did that other the state of Rome. 

As reason is a rebel unto faith, so passion unto rea- 
son; as the propositions of faith seem absurd unto 
reason, so the theorems of reason unto passion, and 
both [reason and passion] unto [faith ;] yet a moderate 
and peaceable discretion may so state and order the 
matter, that they may be all kings and yet make but 
one monarchy, every one exercising his sovereignty 
and prerogative in a due time and place, according to 
the restraint and limit of circumstance. There is, as 
in philosophy, so in divinity, sturdy doubts and boiste- 
rous objections, wherewith the unhappiness of our 
knowledge too nearly acquainteth us. More of these 
no man hath known than myself, which I confess I 
conquered, not in a martial posture but on my knees. 
For our endeavours are not only to combat with 
doubts, but always to dispute with the devil ; the vil- 
lany of that spirit takes a hint of infidelity from ouv 
studies, and by demonstrating a naturality in one way 
makes us mistrust a miracle in another. Thus having 
perused the Archidoxis and read the secret sympathies 
of things, he would dissuade my belief from the miracle 
of the brazen serpent, make me conceit that image 
worked by sympathy, and was but an Egyptian trick 
to cure their diseases without a miracle. Again, having 
seen some experiments of bitumen, and having read far 
more of naphtha, he whispered to my curiosity the fire 
of the altar might be natural ; and bid me mistrust a 

5 



50 RELIGIO MEDICI. 

miracle in Elias when he intrenched the altar round 
with water ; for that inflammable substance yields not 
easily unto water, but flames in the arms of its antago- 
nist. And thus would he inveigle my belief to think 
the combustion of Sodom might be natural, and that 
there was an asphaltick and bituminous nature in that 
lake before the fire of Gomorrah. I know that manna 
is now plentifully gathered in Calabria, and Josephus 
tells me, in his days it was as plentiful in Arabia; the 
devil therefore made the query, where was then the 
miracle in the days of Moses ? the Israelites saw but 
that in his time the natives of those countries behold in 
ours. Thus the devil played at chess with me, and 
yielding a pawn thought to gain a queen of me, taking 
advantage of my honest endeavours ; and whilst I la- 
boured to raise the structure of my reason, he strived 
to undermine the edifice of my faith. 

XX. Neither had these or any other ever such ad- 
vantage of me as to incline me to any point of infidelity 
or desperate positions of atheism ; for I have been these 
many years of opinion there was never any. Those 
that held religion was the difference of man from beasts 
have spoken probably, and proceed upon a principle as 
inductive as the other. That doctrine of Epicurus, that 
denied the providence of God, was no atheism, but a 
magnificent and high-strained conceit of his majesty, 
which he deemed too sublime to mind the trivial 
actions of those inferior creatures. That fatal neces- 
sity of the Stoicks, is nothing but the immutable law of 
his will. Those that heretofore denied the divinity of 
the Holy Ghost, have been condemned but as hereticks ; 
and those that now deny our Saviour (though more 
than hereticks) are not so much as atheists ; for though 



RELIGIO MEDICI. 51 

they deny two persons in the Trinity, they hold as we 
do, there is but one God. 

That villain and secretary of hell that composed that 
miscreant piece of the three impostors, though divided 
from all religions, and was neither Jew, Turk, nor 
Christian, was not a positive atheist. I confess every 
country hath its Machiavel, every age its Lucian, 
whereof common heads must not hear, nor more ad- 
vanced judgments too rashly venture on; it is the rhe- 
torick of Satan, and may pervert a loose or prejudicate 
belief 

XXL I confess I have perused them all, and can dis- 
cover nothing that may startle a discreet belief; yet 
are there heads carried off with the* wind and breath of 
such motives. I remember a doctor of physic in Italy, 
who could not perfectly believe the immortality of the 
soul, because Galen seemed to make a doubt thereof. 
With another 1 was familiarly acquainted in France, a 
divine and man of singular parts, that on the same 
point was so plunged and gravelled with three lines of 
Seneca,* that all our antidotes, drawn from both Scrip- 
ture and philosophy, could not expel the poison of his 
errour. There are a set of heads that can credit the 
relations of mariners, yet question the testimonies of 
St. Paul; and peremptorily maintain the traditions of 
iEHan or Pliny, yet in histories of Scripture raise 
queries and objections, believing no more than they can 
parallel in human authors. I confess there are in 

* Mors individua est noxia corpori 
Nee parceiis animse. 

Post mortem nihil est, ipsaque mors nihil. 
Tota morimur, nuUaque pars manet 
Nostri. 



52 RELIGIO MEDICI. 

Scripture stories that do exceed the fable of poets, and 
to a captious reader found hke Garagantua or Bevis ; 
search all the legends of times past, and the fabulous 
conceits of these present, and 'twill be hard to find one 
that deserves to carry the buckler unto Samson ; yet is 
all this of an easy possibility, if we conceive a divine 
concourse or an influence but from the little finger of 
the Almighty. It is impossible that either in the dis- 
course of man or in the infallible voice of God, to the 
weakness of our apprehensions, there should not appear 
irregularities, Contradictions, and antinomies ; myself 
could shew a catalogue of doubts never yet imagined 
nor questioned, as I know, which are not resolved at 
the first hearing ; not fantastick queries or objections of 
air, for I cannot hear of atoms in divinity. I can read 
the history of the pigeon that was sent out of the ark, 
and returned no more, yet not question how she found 
out her mate that was left behind ; that Lazarus was 
raised from the dead, yet not demand where in the in- 
terim his soul aw^aited ; or raise a law-case, whether 
his heir might lawfully detain his inheritance be- 
queathed unto him by his death ; and he, though re- 
stored to life, have no plea or title unto his former pos- 
sessions. Whether Eve was framed out of the left side 
of Adam, I dispute not; because I stand not yet as- 
sured which is the right side of a man, or whether 
there be any such distinction in nature ; that she was 
edified out of the rib of Adam I believe, yet raise no 
question who shall arise with that rib at the resurrec- 
tion. Whether Adam was an hermaphrodite, as the 
rabbins contend upon the letter of the text ; because it 
is contrary to reason there should be an hermaphrodite 
before there was a woman, or a composition of two 



REL I GIO MEDICI. 53 

natures, before there was a second composed. Like- 
wise, whether the world was created in autumn, sum- 
mer, or the spring ; because it was created in them all ; 
for whatsoever sign the sun possesseth those four sea- 
sons are actually existent ; it is the nature of this lumi- 
nary to distinguish the several seasons of the year, all 
which it makes at one time in the whole earth, and 
successive in any part thereof. There are a bundle of 
curiosities, not only in philosophy but in divinity, pro- 
posed and discussed by men of most supposed abilities, 
which indeed are not worthy our vacant hours, much 
less our serious studies; pieces only fit to be placed 
in Pantagruel's Hbrary, or bound up with Tartaretus 
de modo cacandi. 

XXII. These are niceties that become not those that 
peruse so serious a mystery. There are others more 
generally questioned and called to the bar, yet methinks 
of an easy and possible truth. 'Tis ridiculous to put 
off, or drown the general flood of Noah in that particu- 
lar inundation of Deucalion ; that there was a deluge 
once, seems not to me so great a miracle as that there 
is not one always. How all the kinds of. creatures, not 
only in their own bulks, but with a competency of food 
and sustenance, might be preserved in one ark, and 
within the extent of three hundred cubits, to a reason 
that rightly examines it will appear very feasible. 
There is another secret, not contained in the Scripture, 
which is more hard to comprehend, and put the honest 
father to the refuge of a miracle ; and that is, not only 
how the distinct pieces of the world and divided islands 
should be first planted by men, but inhabited by tigers, 
panthers, and bears. How America abounded with 
beasts of prey and noxious animals, yet contained not 

5* 



54 UEL I GIO MEDICI. 

in it that necessary creature, a horse, is very strange. 
By what passage those, not only birds, but dangerous 
and unwelcome beasts came over ; how there be crea- 
tures there which are not found in this triple continent ; 
all which must needs be strange unto us, that hold but 
one ark, and that the creatures began their progress 
from the mountains of Ararat. They who to salve this 
would make the deluge particular, proceed upon a 
principle that I can no way grant ; not only upon the 
negative of Holy Scriptures, but of mine own reason, 
whereby I can make it probable that the world was as 
well peopled in the time of Noah as in ours ; and fif- 
teen hundred years to people the world as full a time 
for them as four thousand years since have been to us. 
There are other assertions and common tenents drawn 
from Scripture, and generally believed as Scripture, 
whereunto, notwithstanding, I would never betray the 
liberty of my reason. 'Tis a postulate to me, that Me- 
thusalem was the longest lived of all the children of 
Adam, and no man will be able to prove it ; when from 
the process of the text I can manifest it may be other- 
wise. That Judas perished by hanging himself, there 
is no certainty in Scripture, though in one place it 
seems to affirm it, and by a doubtful word hath given 
occasion to translate it ; yet in another place, in a more 
punctual description, it makes it improbable and seems 
to overthrow it. That our fathers, after the flood, 
erected the tower of Babel to preserve themselves 
against a second deluge is generally opinioned and be- 
lieved, yet is there another intention of theirs expressed 
in Scripture ; besides, it is improbable from the circum- 
stance of the place, that is, a plain in the land of Shinar. 
These are no points of faith, and therefore may admit 



KELIGIO MEDICI. 55 

a free dispute. There are yet others, and those fami- 
harly concluded from the text, wherein (under favour) 
I see no consequence. The church of Rome confidently 
proves the opinion of tutelary angels from that answer 
when Peter knockt at the door, It is not he, but his 
angel ; that is, might some say, his messenger or some 
body fi'om him ; for so the original signifies, and is as 
likely to be the doubtful families meaning. This expo- 
sition I once suggested to a young divine that answered 
upon this point ; to which I remember the Franciscan 
opponent replied no more but that it was a new and no 
authentick interpretation. 

XXIII. These are but the conclusions and fallible 
discourses of man upon the word of God, for such I do 
believe the Holy Scriptures; yet were it of man, I 
could not choose but say it was the singularest, and 
superlative piece that hath been extant since the crea- 
tion ; were I a pagan I should not refrain the lecture of 
it ; and cannot but commend the judgment of Ptolemy, 
that thought not his library complete without it. The 
Alcoran of the Turks (I speak without prejudice) is an 
ill-composed piece, containing in it vain and ridiculous 
errours in philosophy, impossibilities, fictions, and vani- 
ties beyond laughter, maintained by evident and open 
sophisms, the policy of ignorance, deposition of univer- 
sities, and banishment of learning, that hath gotten foot 
by arms and violence ; this without a blow hath disse- 
minated itself through the whole earth. It is not un- 
remarkable what Philo first observed, that the law of 
Moses continued two thousand years without the least 
aheration ; whereas we see the laws of other common- 
weals do alter with occasions; and even those that 
pretended their original from some divinity, to have 



56 RELIGIO MEDICI. 

vanished without trace or memory. I believe besides 
Zoroaster there were divers that writ before Moses, 
who notwithstanding have suffered the common fate of 
time. Men's works have an age Hke themselves, and 
though they outlive their authors yet have they a stint 
and period to their duration ; this only is a work too 
hard for the teeth of time, and cannot perish but in the 
general flames when all things shall confess their ashes. 
XXIV. I have heard some with deep sighs lament 
the lost lines of Cicero ; others with as many groans 
deplore the combustion of the library of Alexandria ; for 
my own part, I think there be too many in the world, 
and could with patience behold the urn and ashes of 
the Vatican, could I with a few others recover the 
perished leaves of Solomon. I would not omit a copy 
of Enoch's pillars, had they many nearer authors than 
Josephus, or did not relish somewhat of tjie fable. 
Some men have written more than others have spoken ; 
Pineda quotes more authors in one work than are 
necessary in a whole world.* Of those three great 
inventions in Germany there are two which are not 
without their incommodities, and 'tis disputable whe- 
ther they exceed not their use and commodities. 'Tis 
not a melancholy utinam of mine own, but the desires 
of better heads, that there were a general synod ; not 
to unite the incompatible difference of rehgion, but for 
the benefit of learning ; to reduce it as it lay at first in 
a few and solid authors, and to condemn to the fire 
those swarms and millions of rhapsodies begotten only 
to distract and abuse the weaker judgments of scho- 

* Pineda, in his Monarchia Ecclesiastica quotes one thousand and 
forty authors. 



RELIGIO MEDICI. 57 

lars, and to maintain the trade and mystery of typo- 
graphers. 

XXV. I cannot but wonder with what exceptions 
the Samaritans could confine their beUef to the Penta- 
teuch, or five books of Moses. I am ashamed at the 
rabbinical interpretation of the Jews upon the Old 
Testament, as much as their defection from the New. 
And truly it is beyond wonder how that contemptible 
and degenerate issue of Jacob, once so devoted to 
ethnick superstition and so easily seduced to the ido- 
latry of their neighbours, should now in such an obsti- 
nate and peremptory belief adhere unto their own 
doctrine, expect impossibilities, and in the face and eye 
of the church persist without the least hope of conver- 
sion ; this is a vice in them that were a virtue in us ; 
for obstinacy in a bad cause is but constancy in a good. 
And herein I must accuse those of my own religion ; 
for there is not any of such a fugitive faith, such an 
unstable belief, as a Christian; none that do so oft 
transform themselves, not unto several shapes of Chris- 
tianity and of the same species, but unto more unna- 
tural and contrary forms, of Jew and Mahometan ; that 
from the name of Saviour can condescend to the bare 
term of prophet ; and from an old belief that he is 
come, fall to a new expectation of his coming. It is 
the promise of Christ to make us all one flock ; but 
how and when this union shall be, is as obscure to me 
as the last day. Of those four members of religion we 
hold a slender proportion; there are, I confess, some 
new additions, yet small to those which accrue to our 
adversaries, and those only drawn from the revolt of 
pagans, men but of negative impieties, and such as 
deny Christ but because they never heard of him; 



58 RELIGIO MEDICI. 

but the religion of the Jew is expressly against the 
Christian, and the Mahometan against both. For the 
Turk, in the bulk he now stands, he is beyond all hope 
of conversion; if he fall asunder there may be con- 
ceived hopes, but not without strong improbabilities. 
The Jew is obstinate in all fortunes ; the persecution of 
fifteen hundred years hath but confirmed them in their 
errour ; they have already endured whatsoever may be 
inflicted, and have suffered, in a bad cause, even to the 
condemnation of their enemies. Persecution is a bad 
and indirect way to plant religion ; it hath been the 
unhappy method of angry devotions, not only to con- 
firm honest religion, but wicked heresies and extrava- 
gant opinions. It was the first stone and basis of our 
faith : none can more justly boast of persecutions, and 
glory in the number and valour of martyrs ; for, to 
speak properly, those are true and almost only exam- 
ples of fortitude ; those that are fetcht from the field, or 
drawn from the actions of the camp, are not oft-times 
so truly precedents of valour as audacity, and at the 
best attain but to some bastard piece of fortitude. If 
we shall strictly examine the circumstances and requi- 
sites which Aristotle requires to true and perfect valour, 
we shall find the name only in his master Alexander, 
and as little in that Roman worthy Julius Csesar ; and 
if any in that easy and active way have done so nobly 
as to deserve that name, yet in the passive and more 
terrible piece these have surpassed, and in a more 
heroical way may claim the honour of that title. 'Tis 
not in the power of every honest faith to proceed thus 
far, or pass to heaven through the flames ; every one 
hath it not in that full measure, nor in so audacious and 
resolute a temper, as to endure those terrible tests and 



RELIGIO MEDICI. 59 

trials; who notwithstanding in a peaceable way do 
truly adore their Saviour, and have (no doubt) a faith 
acceptable in the eyes of God. 

XXVI. Now as all that die in the war are not termed 
soldiers, so neither can I properly term all those that 
suffer in matters of religion, martyrs. The council of 
Constance condemns John Huss for an heretick, the 
stories of his own party style him a martyr ; he must 
needs offend the divinity of both, that says he was 
neither the one nor the other. There are many (ques- 
tionless) canonized on earth that shall never be saints 
in heaven ; and have their names in histories and mar- 
tyrologies, who in the eyes of God are not so perfect 
martyrs as was that wise heathen Socrates, that suf- 
fered on a fundamental point of religion, the unity of 
God. I have often pitied the miserable bishop that suf- 
fered in the cause of antipodes, yet cannot choose but 
accuse him of as much madness for exposing his living 
on such a trifle, as those of ignorance and folly that 
condemned him. I think my conscience will not give 
me the lie, if I say there are not many extant that in a 
noble w^ay fear the face of death less than myself; yet 
from the moral duty I owe to the commandment of 
God, and the natural respects that I tender unto the 
conservation of my essence and being, I would not 
perish upon a ceremony, politick points, or indiffer- 
ency ; nor is my belief of that untractable temper as 
not to bow at their obstacles, or connive at matters 
wherein there are not manifest impieties. The leaven 
therefore and ferment of all, not only civil but religious 
actions, is wisdom ; without which, to commit our- 
selves to the flames is homicide, and (I fear) but to pass 
through one fire into another. 



60 RELIGIO MEDICI. 

XXVII. That miracles are ceased I can neither 
prove nor absolutely deny, much less define the time 
and period of their cessation ; that they survived Christ, 
is manifest upon the record of Scripture; that they 
outlived the apostles also, and were revived at the con- 
version of nations many years after, we cannot deny, 
if we shall not question those writers whose testimonies 
we do not controvert in points that make for our own 
opinions. Therefore that may have some truth in it 
that is reported by the Jesuits of their miracles in the 
Indies ; I could wish it were true, or had any other 
testimony than their own pens; they may easily be- 
lieve those miracles abroad who daily conceive a 
greater at home, the transmutation of those visible ele- 
ments into the body and blood of our Saviour ; for the 
conversion of water into wine, w^iich he wrought in 
Cana, or what the devil would have had him done in 
the wilderness, of stones into bread, compared to this 
will scarce deserve the name of a miracle : though in- 
deed, to speak properly, there is not one miracle greater 
than another, they being the extraordinary effect of the 
hand of God, to which all things are of an equal facility, 
and to create the world as easy as one single creature. 
For this is also a miracle, not only to produce effects 
against or above nature, but before nature ; and to 
create nature, as great a miracle, as to contradict or 
transcend her. We do too narrowly define the power 
of God, restraining it to our capacities. I hold that 
God can do all things ; how he should work contradic- 
tions I do not understand, yet dare not therefore deny. 
I cannot see why the angel of God should question 
Esdras to recal the time past, if it were beyond his 
own power : or that God should pose mortality in that 



RELIGIO MEDICI. 61 

which he was not able to perform himself. I will not 
say God cannot, but he will not perform many things 
which we plainly affirm he cannot; this I am sure is 
the mannerliest proposition, wherein notwithstanding I 
hold no paradox : for strictly, his power is the same 
with his will, and they both with all the rest do make 
but one God. 

XXVIII. Therefore that miracles have been I do be- 
lieve ; that they may yet be wrought by the living I do 
not deny ; but have no confidence in those which are 
fathered on the dead ; and this hath ever made me sus- 
pect the efficacy of reliques, to examine the bones, 
question the habits and appertenances of saints, and 
even of Christ himself. I cannot conceive why the 
cross that Helena found, and whereon Christ himself 
died, should have power to restore others unto life. I 
excuse not Constantine from a fall off his horse, or a 
mischief from his enemies, upon the wearing those 
nails on his bridle which our Saviour bore upon the 
cross in his hands ; I compute among your pice fraudes, 
nor many decrees before consecrated swords and roses, 
that which Baldwyn king of Jerusalem returned the 
Genovese for their cost and pains in his war, to wit, 
the ashes of John the Baptist. Those that hold the 
sanctity of their souls doth leave behind a tincture and 
sacred facuhy on their bodies, speak naturally of mira- 
cles, and do not salve the doubt. Now one reason I 
tender so little devotion unto reliques is, I think, the 
slender and doubtful respect I have always held unto 
antiquities ; for that indeed which I admire is far before 
antiquity, that is eternity^ and that is God himself; who 
though he be styled the Ancient of days, cannot re- 
ceive the adjunct of antiquity, who was before the 

6 



62 K.ELIGIO MEDICI. 

world, and shall be after it, yet is not older than it ; for 
in his years there is no climacter; his duration is 
eternity, and far more venerable than antiquity. 

XXIX. But above all things I wonder how the curi- 
osity of wiser heads could pass that great and indis- 
putable miracle, the cessation of oracles ; and in w^hat 
swoon their reasons lay, to content themselves and sit 
down with such a far-fetcht and ridiculous reason as 
Plutarch alledgeth for it. The Jews that can believe 
the supernatural solstice of the sun in the days of 
Joshua, have yet the impudence to deny the eclipse, 
which every pagan confessed, at his death ; but for this, 
it is evident beyond all contradiction, the devil himself 
confessed it.* Certainly it is not a warrantable curi- 
osity to examine the verity of Scripture by the con- 
cordance of human history, or seek to confirm the 
chronicle of Hester or Daniel, by the authority of 
Magasthenes or Herodotus. I confess I have had an 
unhappy curiosity this way, till I laughed myself out of 
it with a piece of Justin, where he delivers that the 
children of Israel for being scabbed were banished out 
of Egypt. And truly since I have understood the oc- 
currences of the world, and know in what counterfeit 
shapes and deceitful vizards times present represent on 
the stage things past, I do believe them little more than 
things to come. Some have been of my opinion, and 
endeavoured to write the history of their own lives ; 
wherein Moses hath outgone them all, and left not only 
the story of his life, but as some will have it, of his 
death also. 

XXX. It is a riddle to me, how this story of oracles 

» In his oracle to Augustus. 



RELIGIO MEDICI. 63 

hath not wormed out of the world that doubtful con- 
ceit of spirits and witches ; how so many learned heads 
should so far forget their metaphysicks and destroy the 
ladder and scale of creatures, as to question the exist- 
ence of spirits ; for my part I have ever believed, and 
do now know, that there are witches ; they that doubt 
of these do not only deny them, but spirits ; and are 
obliquely and upon consequence a sort, not of infidels, 
but atheists. Those that to confute their incredulity 
desire to see apparitions, shall questionless never behold 
any, nor have the power to be so much as witches ; the 
devil hath them already in a heresy as capital as witch- 
craft, and to appear to them were but to convert them. 
Of all the delusions wherewith he deceives mortality, 
there is not any that puzzleth me more than the leger- 
demain of changelings ; I do not credit those trans- 
formations of reasonable creatures into beasts, or that 
the devil hath a power to transpeciate a man into a 
horse, who tempted Christ (as a trial of his divinity) to 
convert but stones into bread. I could believe that 
spirits use with man the act of carnality, and that in 
both sexes ; I conceive they may assume, steal, or con- 
trive a body wherein there may be action enough to 
content decrepit lust, or passion to satisfy more active 
veneries ; yet in both without a possibility of genera- 
tion ; and therefore that opinion that Antichrist should 
be born of the tribe of Dan by conjunction with the 
devil is ridiculous, and a conceit fitter for a rabbin than 
a Christian. I hold that the devil doth really possess 
some men, the spirit of melancholy others, the spirit of 
delusion others ; that as the devil is concealed and de- 
nied by some, so God and good angels are pretended 



64 KELIGIO MEDICI. 

by others, whereof the late detection of the maid of 
Germany hath left a pregnant example. 

XXXI. Again, I believe that all that use sorceries, 
incantations, and spells are not witches, or as we term 
them, magicians ; I conceive there is a traditional ma- 
gick, not learned immediately from the devil, but at 
second hand from his scholars ; who having once the 
secret betrayed, are able, and do empirically practise 
without his advice, they both proceeding upon the prin- 
ciples of nature, where actives aptly conjoined to dis- 
posed passives will under any master produce their 
effects. Thus I think at first a great part of philosophy 
was witchcraft, which being afterward derived to one 
another, proved but philosophy, and was indeed no 
more but the honest effects of nature ; what invented by 
us is philosophy, learned from him is magick. We do 
surely owe the discovery of many secrets to the disco- 
very of good and bad angels. I could never pass that 
sentence of Paracelsus without an asterisk or annota- 
tion;* Ascendens constellatum muUa revelat qucerenti- 
hus magnalia natiircp, i. e. oiperi Dei. I do think that 
many mysteries ascribed to our own inventions have 
been the courteous revelations of spirits, for those noble 
essences in heaven bear a friendly regard unto their 
fellow natures on earth ; and therefore believe that 
those many prodigies and ominous prognosticks which 
forerun the ruins of states, princes, and private persons, 
are the charitable premonitions of good angels, which 
more careless inquiries term but the effects of chance 
and nature. 

XXXII. Now besides these particular and divided 

* Thereby is meant our good angel, appointed us from our nativity. 



RELIGIO MEDICI. 65 

spirits there may be (for aught I know) an universal 
and common spirit to the whole world. It was the 
opinion of Plato, and it is yet of the Hermetical philo- 
sophers ; if there be a common nature that unites and 
ties the scattered and divided individuals into one spe- 
cies, why may there not be one that unites them all ? 
However, I am sure there is a common spirit that plays 
within us, yet makes no part of us ; and that is the Spirit 
of God, the fire and the scintillation of that noble and 
mighty essence, which is the Hfe and radical heat of 
spirits, and those essences that know not the virtue of 
the sun ; a fire quite contrary to the fire of hell. This 
is that gentle heat that brooded on the waters, and in 
six days hatched the world ; this is that irradiation that 
dispels the mists of hell, the clouds of horrour, fear, 
sori'ow, despair ; and preserves the region of the mind 
in serenity; whosoever feels not the warm gale and 
gentle ventilation of this spirit (though I feel his pulse) 
I dare not say he lives ; for truly without this, to me 
there is no heat under the tropick, nor any light though 
I dwelt in the body of the sun. 

As when the labouring' sun hath wrought his track 

Up to the top of lofty Cancer's back, 

The icy ocean cracks, the frozen pole 

Thaws with the heat of the celestial coal ; 

So when thy absent beams begin t' impart 

Again a solstice on my frozen heart, 

My winter's o'er, my drooping spirits sing, 

And every part revives into a spring. 

But if thy quickening beams a while decline. 

And wit!) their light bless not this orb of mine, 

A chilly frost surpriseth every member, 

And in the midst of June I feel December. 

O how this earthly temper doth debase 

The noble soul, in this her humble place ! 

6* 



66 RELIGIO MEDICI. 

Whose wingy nature ever doth aspire 
To reach that place whence first it took its fire. 
These flames I feel, which in my heart do dwell, 
Are not thy beams, but take their fire from hell ; 
O quench them all ! and let thy light divine 
Be as the sun to this poor orb of mine, 
And to thy sacred Spirit convert those fires, 
Whose earthly fumes choke my devout aspires. 

XXXIII. Therefore for spirits, I am so far from 
denying their existence, that I could easily believe that 
not only whole countries, but particular persons have 
their tutelary and guardian angels. It is not a new 
opinion of the church of Rome, but an old one of 
Pythagoras and Plato ; there is no heresy in it, and if 
not manifestly defined in Scripture yet it is an opinion 
of a good and wholesome use in the course and actions 
of a man's life, and would serve as an hypothesis to 
salve many doubts whereof common philosophy afford- 
eth no solution. Now if you demand my opinion and 
metaphysicks of their natures, I confess them very 
shallow, most of them in a negative way, like that of 
God ; or in a comparative, between ourselvqs and fellow- 
creatures ; for there is in this universe a stair or mani- 
fest scale of creatures, rising not disorderly or in 
confusion, but with a comely method and proportion. 
Between creatures of mere existence and things of life, 
there is a large disproportion of nature ; between plants 
and animals or creatures of sense, a wider difference ; 
between them and man, a far greater ; and if the pro- 
portion hold on, between man and angels there should 
be yet a greater. We do not comprehend their natures 
who retain the first definition of Porphyry, and distin- 
guish them from ourselves by immortality ; for before 
his fall, man also was immortal; yet must we needs 



RELIGIO MEDICI. 67 

affirm that he had a different essence from the angels ; 
having therefore no certain knowledge of their natures, 
'tis no bad method of the schools, whatsoever perfection 
we find obscurely in ourselves, in a more complete and 
absolute way to ascribe unto them. I believe they have 
an extemporary knowledge, and upon the first motion 
of their reason do what we cannot without study or 
deliberation ; that they know things by their forms, and 
define by specifical difference what we describe by 
accidents and properties ; and therefore probabilities to 
us may be demonstrations unto them ; that they have 
knowledge not only of the specifical, but numerical 
forms of individuals, and understand by what reserved 
difference each single hypostasis (besides the relation to 
its species) becomes its numerical self That as the 
soul hath a power to move the body it informs, so 
there's a faculty to move any, though inform none ; ours 
upon restraint of time, place, and distance ; but that 
invisible hand that conveyed Habakkuk to the lions' den, 
or Philip to Azotus, infringeth this rule, and hath a 
secret conveyance wherewith mortality is not ac- 
quainted. If they have that intuitive knowledge whereby 
as in reflexion they behold the thoughts of one another, 
I cannot peremptorily deny but they know a great part 
of ours. They that to refute the invocation of saints have 
denied that they have any knowledge of our affairs 
below, have proceeded too far, and must pardon my 
opinion till I can throughly answer that piece of Scrip- 
ture, at the conversion of a sinner the angels in heaven 
rejoice. 1 cannot with those in that great father se- 
curely interpret the work of the first day, fiat lux, to 
the creation of angels, though, I confess, there is not 
any creature that hath so near a glimpse of their nature. 



68 RELIGIO MEDICI. 

as light in the sun and elements ; we style it a bare ac- 
cident, but where it subsists alone 'tis a spiritual sub- 
stance, and may be an angel ; in brief, conceive light 
invisible, and that is a spirit. 

XXXIV. These are certainly the magisterial and 
masterpieces of the Creator, the flower or (as we may 
say) the best part of nothing, actually existing what we 
are but in hopes and probability ; we are only that am- 
phibious piece between a corporal and spiritual essence, 
that middle form that links those two together, and 
makes good the method of God and nature that jumps 
not from extremes, but unites the incompatible distances 
by some middle and participating natures. That we 
are the breath and similitude of God, it is indisputable, 
and upon record of Holy Scripture ; but to call ourselves 
a microcosm, or little world, I thought it only a pleasant 
trope of rhetorick, till my near judgment and second 
thoughts told me there was a real truth therein ; for first 
we are a rude mass, and in tie rank of creatures which 
only are, and have a dull kind of being not privileged 
with life, or preferred to sense or reason ; next we live 
the life of plants, the life of animals, the life of men, and 
at last the life of spirits, running on in one mysterious 
nature those five kinds of existences, which compre- 
hend the creatures not only of the world, but of the 
universe. Thus is man that great and true amphibium, 
whose nature is disposed to live not only like other 
creatures in divers elements, but in divided and distin- 
guished worlds ; for though there be but one to sense 
there are two to reason ; the one visible, the other in- 
visible, whereof Moses seems to have left description, 
and of the other so obscurely that some parts thereof 
are yet in controversy. And truly for the first chapters 



RELIGIO MEDICI. 69 

of Genesis, I must confess a great deal of obscurity ; 
though divines have to the power of human reason en- 
deavoured to make all go in a literal meaning, yet those 
allegorical interpretations are also probable, and per- 
haps the mystical method of Moses bred up in the 
hieroglyphical schools of the Egyptians. 

XXXV. Now for that immaterial world, methinks 
we need not wander so far as the first moveable ; for 
even in this material fabrick the spirits walk as freely 
exempt from the affection of time, place, and motion, 
as beyond the extremest circumference : do but extract 
from the corpulency of bodies, or resolve things beyond 
their first matter, and you discover the habitation of 
angels, which if I call the ubiquitary and omnipresent 
essence of God, I hope I shall not offend divinity ; for 
before the creation of the world God was really all 
things. For the angels he created no new world, or 
determinate mansion, and therefore they are every 
where where is his essence, and do live at a distance 
even in himself: that God made all things for man, is 
in some seifse true, yet not so far as to subordinate the 
creation of those purer creatures unto ours, though as 
ministring spirits they do, and are willing to fulfil the 
will of God in these lower and sublunary affairs of 
man. God made all things for himself, and it is impos- 
sible he should make them for any other end than his 
own glory ; it is all he can receive, and all that is with- 
out himself; for honour being an external adjunct, and 
in the honourer rather than in the person honoured, it 
was necessary to make a creature from whom he might 
receive this homage, and that is in the other world 
angels, in this, man ; which when we neglect, we forget 
the very end of our creation, and may justly provoke 



70 RELIGIO MEDICI. 

God not only to repent that he hath made the world, 
but that he hath sworn he would not destroy it. That 
there is but one world, is a conclusion of faith. Aristotle 
with all his philosophy hath not been able to prove it, 
and as weakly that the world was eternal ; that dispute 
much troubled the pen of the ancient philosophers, but 
Moses decided that question, and all is salved with the 
new term of a creation, that is, a production of some- 
thing out of nothing ; and what is that 1 Whatsoever 
is opposite to something ; or more exactly, that which 
is truly contrary unto God ; for he only is, all others 
have an existence with dependency, and are something 
but by a distinction : and herein is divinity conformant 
unto philosophy, and generation not only founded on 
contrarieties, but also creation ; God being all things, 
is contrary unto nothing, out of which were made all 
things, and so nothing became something, and omneity 
informed nullity into an essence. 

XXXVI. The whole creation is a mystery, and par- 
ticularly that of man ; at the blast of his mouth were 
the rest of the creatures made, and at his bai^ word they 
started out of nothing ; but in the frame of man (as the 
text describes it) he played the sensible operator, and 
seemed not so much to create, as make him ; when he 
had separated the materials of other creatures there 
consequently resulted a form and soul; but having 
raised the walls of man, he was driven to a second 
and harder creation of a substance like himself, an 
incorruptible and immortal soul. For these two affec- 
tions we have the philosophy and opinion of the 
heathens ; the flat affirmative of Plato, and not a nega- 
tive from Aristotle. There is another scruple cast in 
by divinity (concerning its production) much disputed 



RELIGIO MEDICI. 71 

in the German auditories, and with that indifferency 
and equaHty of argument as leave the controversy unde- 
termined. I am not of Paracelsus' mind, that boldly 
delivers a receipt to make a man without conjunction ; 
yet cannot but wonder at the multitude of heads that 
do deny traduction, having no other argument to con- 
firm their belief than that rhetorical sentence and anti- 
metathesis of Augustine, creawc?o infunditur,infundendo 
creatur : either opinion will consist well enough with 
religion ; yet I should rather incline to this, did not one 
objection haunt me, not wrung from speculations and 
subtilties but from common sense, and observation ; not 
pickt from the leaves of any author, but bred amongst 
the w^eeds and tares of mine own brain. And this is a 
conclusion from the equivocal and monstrous produc- 
tions in the copulation of a man with a beast; for if 
the soul of man be not transmitted and transfused in 
the seed of the parents, why are not those productions 
merely beasts, but have also an impression and tincture 
of reason in as high a measure as it can evidence itself 
in those improper organs 1 Nor truly can I peremp- 
torily deny that the soul, in this her sublunary estate, is 
wholly and in all acceptions inorganical, but that for 
the performance of her ordinary actions is required not 
only a symmetry and proper disposition of organs, but 
a crasis and temper correspondent to its operations: 
yet is not this mass of flesh and visible structure the 
instrument and proper corps of the soul, but rather of 
sense, and that the hand of reason. In our study of 
anatomy there is a mass of mysterious philosophy, and 
such as reduced the very heathens to divinity : yet 
amongst all those rare discoveries and curious pieces I 
find in the fabrick of man, I do not so much content 



72 KELIGIO MEDICI. 

myself as in that I find not, that is, no organ or instru- 
ment for the rational soul ; for in the brain, which we 
term the seat of reason, there is not any thing of moment 
more than I can discover in the crany of a beast ; and 
this is a sensible and no inconsiderable argument of the 
inorganity of the soul, at least in that sense we usually 
so receive it. Thus we are men, and we know not 
how ; there is something in us that can be without us, 
and will be after us, though it is strange that it hath no 
history what it was before us, nor cannot tell how it 
entered in us. 

XXXVII. Now for these walls of flesh, whereih the 
soul doth seem to be immured before the resurrection, 
it is nothing but an elemental composition, and a fabric 
that must fall to ashes. All flesh is grass, is not only 
metaphorically but literally true ; for all those creatures 
we behold are but the herbs of the field, digested into 
flesh in them, or more remotely carnified in ourselves. 
Nay further, we are all what we abhor, anthropophagi 
and cannibals, devourers not only of men, but of our- 
selves ; and that not in an allegory, but a positive truth ; 
for all this mass of flesh which we behold, came in at 
our mouths ; this frame we look upon, hath been upon 
our trenchers ; in brief, we have devoured ourselves. I 
cannot believe the wisdom of Pythagoras did ever posi- 
tively, and in a literal sense, aflirm his metempsuchosis, 
or impossible transmigration of the souls of men into 
beasts : of all metamorphoses or transmigrations I believe 
only one, that is of Lot's wife, for that of Nebuchodo- 
nosor proceeded not so far ; in all other I conceive there 
is no further verity than is contained in their implicit 
sense and morality. I believe that the whole frame of 
a beast doth perish, and is left in the same state after 



RELIGIO MEDICI. 73 

death as before it was materialled unto life ; that the 
souls of men know neither contrary nor corruption ; that 
they subsist beyond the body, and outlive death by the 
privilege of their proper natures, and without a miracle ; 
that the ^ouls of the faithful, as they leave earth, take 
possession of heaven ; that those apparitions and ghosts 
of departed persons are not the wandering souls of men, 
but the unquiet walks of devils, prompting and suggest- 
ing us unto mischief, blood, and villany, instilling, and 
stealing into our hearts ; that the blessed spirits are not 
at rest in their graves, but wander solicitous of the 
affairs of the world : that those phantasms appear often 
and do frequent cemeteries, charnel-houses, and churches, 
■ it is because those are the dormitories of the dead, where 
the devil like an insolent champion beholds with pride 
the spoils and trophies of his victory in Adam. 

XXXVIII. This is that dismal conquest we all 
deplore, that makes us so often cry (O) Adam quid 
fecisti ! I thank God I have not those strait ligaments, 
or narrow obligations to the world, as to dote on life or 
be convulst and tremble at the name of death ; not that 
I am insensible of the dread and horrour thereof, or by 
raking into the bowels of the deceased, continual sight 
of anatomies, skeletons, or cadaverous reliques, hke 
vespilloes, or grave-makers, I am become stupid, or have 
forgot the apprehension of mortality ; but that marshal- 
Ung all the horrours, and contemplating the extremities 
thereof, I find not any thing therein able to daunt the 
courage of a man, much less a well-resolved Christian. 
And therefore am not angry at the errour of our first 
parents, or unwilling to bear a part of this common 
fate, and like the best of them to die, that is, to cease to 
breathe, to take a farewell of the elements, to be a kind 

7 



74 



RELIGIO MEDICI. 



of nothing for a moment, to be within one instant of a 
spirit. When I take a full view and circle of myself, 
without this reasonable moderator and equal piece of 
justice, death, I do conceive myself the miserablest 
person extant ; were there not another life that I hope 
for, all the vanities of this world should not in treat a 
moment's breath from me; could the devil work my 
belief to imagine I could never die, I would not outlive 
that very thought ; I have so abject a conceit of this 
common way of existence, this retaining to the sun and 
elements, I cannot think this is to be a man, or to live 
according to the dignity of humanity : in expectation of 
a better, I can with patience embrace this life, yet in my 
best meditations do often defy death ; I honour any man 
that contemns it, nor can I highly love any that is afraid 
of it ; this makes me naturally love a soldier, and honour 
those tattered and contemptible regiments that will die 
at the command of a sergeant. For a pagan there may 
be some motives to be in love with life ; but for a Chris- 
tian to be amazed at death, I see not how he can escape 
this dilemma, that he is too sensible of this life, or hope- 
less of the life to come. 

XXXIX. Some divines count Adam thirty years 
old at his creation, because they suppose him created in 
the perfect age and stature of man. And surely we are 
all out of the computation of our age, and every man is 
some months elder than he bethinks him ; for we live, 
move, have a being, and are subject to the actions of 
the elements and the malice of diseases, in that other 
world, the truest microcosm, the womb of our mother. 
For besides that general and common existence we are 
conceived to hold in our chaos, and whilst we sleep 
within the bosom of our causes, we enjoy a being and 



J 



RELIGIO MEDICI. 75 

life in three distinct worlds, wherein we receive most 
manifest graduations. In that obscure world and womb 
of our mother, our time is short, computed by the moon ; 
yet longer than the days of many creatures that behold 
the sun, ourselves being not yet without life, sense, and 
reason; though for the manifestation of its actions, it 
awaits the opportunity of objects, and seems to live 
there but in its root and soul of vegetation ; entering 
afterwards upon the scene of the world, we arise up and 
become another creature, performing the reasonable 
actions of man, and obscurely manifesting that part of 
divinity in us, but not in complement and perfection till 
we have once more cast our secondine, that is, this 
slough of flesh, and are delivered into the last world, 
that is, that ineffable place of Paul, that proper uhi of 
spirits. The smattering I have of the philosophers' 
stone (which is something more than the perfect exalta- 
tion of gold) hath taught me a great deal of divinity, 
and instructed my belief, how that immortal spirit and 
incorruptible substance of my soul may lie obscure, and 
sleep a while within this house of flesh. Those strange 
and mystical transmigrations that I have observed in 
silkworms, turned my philosophy into divinity. There 
is in these works of nature, which seem to puzzle 
reason, something divine, and hath more in it than the 
eye of a common spectator doth discover. 

XL. I am naturally bashful, nor hath conversation, 
age, or travel, been able to effront, or enharden me ; 
yet I have one part of modesty which I have seldom 
discovered in another, that is (to speak truly) I am not 
so much afraid of death, as ashamed thereof; 'tis the 
very disgrace and ignominy of our natures, that in a 
moment can so disfigure us that our nearest friends, 



76 RELIGIO MEDICI. 

wife, and children stand afraid and start at us. The 
birds and beasts of the field, that before in a natural 
fear obeyed us, forgetting all allegiance begin to prey 
upon us. This very conceit hath in a tempest disposed 
and left me willing to be swallowed up in the abyss of 
waters ; wherein I had perished unseen, unpitied, with- 
out wondering eyes, tears of pity, lectures of mortality, 
and none had said, Quantum mutatus ah illo! Not 
that I am ashamed of the anatomy of my parts, or can 
accuse nature for playing the bungler in any part of me, 
or my own vicious life for contracting any shameful 
disease upon me whereby I might not call myself as 
wholesome a morsel for the worms as any. 

XLI. Some, upon the courage of a fruitful issue, 
wherein as in the truest chronicle they seem to outlive 
themselves, can with greater patience away with death. 
This conceit and counterfeit subsisting in our progenies 
seems to me a mere fallacy, unworthy the desires of a 
man that can but conceive a thought of the next world ; 
who, in a nobler ambition, should desire to live in his sub- 
stance in heaven rather than his name and shadow in 
the earth. And herefore at my death I mean to take 
a total adieu of the world, not caring for a monument, 
history, or epitaph, not so much as the bare memory of 
my name to be found any where but in the universal 
register of God. I am not yet so cynical as to approve 
the testament of Diogenes,* nor do I altogether allow 
that rodomontado of Lucan, 

— Ccelo tegitur, qui non habet urnam. 

He that unburied lies wants not his hearse, 
For unto him a tomb's the universe ; 

* Who willed his friend not to bury him, but to hang him up with a 
staff in his hand to fright away the crows. 



R EL IGIO MEDICI. 77 

but commend in my calmer judgment, those ingenuous 
intentions that desire to sleep by the urns of their fathers, 
and strive to go the neatest way unto corruption. I 
do not envy the temper of crows and daws, nor the 
numerous and weary days of our fathers before the 
flood. If there be any truth in astrology I may outlive 
a jubilee ; as yet I have not seen one revolution of Sa- 
turn, nor hath my pulse beat thirty years, and yet ex- 
cepting one, have seen the ashes and left under ground, 
all the kings of Europe ; have been contemporary to 
three emperours, four grand signiours, and as many 
popes : methinks I have outlived myself, and begin to 
be weary of the sun ; I have shaked hands with delight 
in my warm blood and canicular days ; I perceive I 
do anticipate the vices of age, the world to me is but 
a dream or mock-show, and we all therein but panta- 
lones and anticks to my severer contemplations. 

XLII. It is not, I confess, an unlawful prayer to 
desire to surpass the days of our Saviour, or wish to 
outlive that age wherein he thought fittest to die ; yet if 
(as divinity affirms) there shall be no gray hairs in 
heaven, but all shall rise in the perfect state of men, we 
do but oulive those perfections in this world to be re- 
called unto them by a greater miracle in the next, and 
run on here but to be retrograde hereafter. Were there 
any hopes to outlive vice, or a point to be superannuated 
from sin, it were worthy our knees to implore the days 
of Methuselah. But age doth not rectify, but incurvate 
our natures, turning bad dispositions into worser habits, 
and (like diseases) brings on incurable vices ; for every 
day as we grow weaker in age we grow stronger in 
sin, and the number of our days doth but make our sins 
innumerable. The same vice committed at sixteen, is 

7* 



78 KELIGIO MEDICI. 

not the same, though it agree in all other circum- 
stances, as at forty, but swells and doubles from that 
circumstance of our ages, wherein, besides the constant 
and inexcusable habit of transgressing, the maturity of 
our judgment cuts off pretence unto excuse or pardon : 
every sin, the oftener it is committed the more it 
acquireth in the quality of evil ; as it succeeds in time, 
so it proceeds in degrees of badness, for as they proceed 
they ever multiply, and like figures in arithmetick, the 
last stands for more than all that went before it. And 
though I think no man can live well once but he that 
could live twice, yet for my own part I would not live 
over my hours past, or begin again the thread of my 
days ; not upon Cicero's ground, because I have lived 
them well, but for fear I should live them worse. I find 
my growing judgment daily instruct me how to be 
better, but my untamed affections and confirmed vitiosity 
makes me daily do worse ; I find in my confirmed age 
the same sins I discovered in my youth ; I committed 
many then because I was a child, and because I 
commit them still I am yet an infant. Therefore I per- 
ceive a man may be twice a child before the days of 
dotage, and stand in need of iEson's bath before three- 
score. 

XLIII. And truly there goes a great deal of provi- 
dence to produce a man's life unto threescore ; there is 
more required than an able temper for those years; 
though the radical humour contain in it sufficient oil for 
seventy, yet I perceive in some it gives no light past 
thirty : men assign not all the causes of long life that 
write whole books thereof. They that found themselves 
on the radical balsam, or vital sulphur of the parts, de- 
termine not why Abel lived not so long as Adam. There 



RELIGIO MEDICI. 79 

is therefore a secret glome or bottom of our days ; 'twas 
his wisdom to determine them, but his perpetual and 
waking providence that fulfils and accomplisheththem ; 
wherein the spirits, ourselves, and all the creatures of 
God in a secret and disputed way do execute his will. 
Let them not therefore complain of immaturity that die 
about thirty ; they fall but like the whole world, whose 
solid and well-composed substance must not expect the 
duration and period of its constitution ; when all things 
are completed in it its age is accomplished, and the last 
and general fever may as naturally destroy it before six 
thousand, as me before forty ; there is therefore some 
other hand that twines the thread of life than that of 
nature : we are not only ignorant in antipathies and 
occult qualities ; our ends are as obscure as our begin- 
nings ; the line of our days is drawn by night, and the 
various effects therein by a pencil that is invisible ; 
wherein though we confess our ignorance, I am sure 
we do not err if we say it is the hand of God. 

XLIV. I am much taken with two verses of Lucan, 
since I have been able not only as we do at school, to 
construe, but understand : 

Victurosque Dei celant, ut vivere durent, 
Felix esse mori. 

We're all deluded, vainly searching ways 
To make us happy by the length of days ; 
For cunningly to make 's protract this breath, 
The Gods conceal the happiness of death. 

There be many excellent strains in that poet, wherewith 
his stoical genius hath liberally supplied him ; and truly 
there are singular pieces in the philosophy of Zeno, and 
doctrine of the stoicks, which, I perceive, delivered in 



80 RELIGIO MEDICI. 

a pulpit I pass for current divinity ; yet herein are they 
in extremes, that can allow a man to be his own 
assassin, and so highly extol the end and suicide of 
Cato ; this is indeed not to fear death, but yet to be 
afraid of life. It is a brave act of valour to contemn 
death ; but where life is more terrible than death it is 
then the truest valour to dare to live ; and herein religion 
hath taught us a noble example : for all the valiant acts 
of Curtius, Sceevola, or Codrus, do not parallel or match 
that one of Job ; and sure there is no torture to the rack 
of a disease, nor any poniards in death itself, like those 
in the way or prologue to it. Emori nolo, sed me esse 
mortuum nihil euro ; I would not die, but care not to be 
dead. Were I of Caesar's religion, I should be of his 
desires, and wish rather to go off at one blow than to 
be sawed in pieces by the grating torture of a disease. 
Men that look no further than their outsides think health 
an appertenance unto life, and quarrel with their consti- 
tutions for being sick ; but I that have examined the 
parts of man, and know upon what tender filaments that 
fabrick hangs, do wonder that we are not always so ; 
and considering the thousand doors that lead to death 
do thank my God that we can die but once. 'Tis not 
only the mischief of diseases, and the villany of poisons, 
that make an end of us ; we vainly accuse the fury of 
guns, and the new inventions of death ; it is in the 
power of every hand to destroy us, and we are beholding 
unto every one we meet he doth not kill us. There is 
therefore but one comfort left, that though it be in the 
power of the weakest arm to take away life, it is not in 
the strongest to deprive us of death; God would not 
exempt himself from that, the misery of immortality in 
the flesh; he undertook not that was in it immortal. 



KELIGIO MEDICI. 81 

Certainly there is no happiness within this circle of 
flesh, nor is it in the opticks of these eyes to behold feli- 
city ; the first day of our jubilee is death, the devil hath 
therefore failed of his desires ; we are happier with death 
than we should have been without it : there is no misery 
but in himself where there is no end of misery ; and so 
indeed in his own sense, the stoick is in the right. He 
forgets that he can die who complains of misery ; we 
are in the power of no calamity while death is in our 
own. 

XLV. Now besides this literal and positive kind of 
death, there are others whereof divines make mention, 
and those I think, not merely metaphorical, as mortifi- 
cation, dying unto sin and the world ; therefore I say, 
every man hath a double horoscope, one of his humanity, 
his birth ; another of his Christianity, his baptism, and 
from this do I compute or calculate my nativity ; not reck- 
oning those horce comhustcB and odd days, or esteeming 
myself any thing before I was my Saviour's, and 
enrolled in the register of Christ : whosoever enjoys not 
this life, I count him but an apparition, though he wear 
about him the sensible aifections of flesh. In these 
moral acceptions, the way to be immortal is to die 
daily ; nor can I think I have the true theory of death 
when I contemplate a skull, or behold a skeleton with 
those vulgar imaginations it casts upon us ; I have there- 
fore enlarged that common memento mori, into a more 
Christian memorandum, memento quatuor novissima, 
those four inevitable points of us all, death, judgment, 
heaven, and hell. Neither did the contemplations of the 
heathens rest in their graves, without a further thought 
of Rhadamanth or some judicial proceeding after death, 
though in another way, and upon suggestion of their 



82 RELIGIO MEDICI. 

natural reasons. I cannot but marvel from what sibyl 
or oracle they stole the prophecy of the world's destruc- 
tion by fire, or whence Lucan learned to say, 

Communis mundo superest rogus, ossibus astra 
Mixturus. 

There yet remains to th' world one common fire, 
Wherein our bones with stars shall make one pyre. 

I believe the world grows near its end, yet is neither old 
nor decayed, nor will ever perish upon the ruins of its 
own principles. As the work of creation was above 
nature, so its adversary, annihilation ; without which the ' 
world hath not its end but its mutation. Now what 
force should be able to consume it thus far, without the 
breath of God which is the truest consuming flame, my 
philosophy cannot inform me. Some believe there went 
not a minute to the world's creation, nor shall there go 
to its destruction ; those six days so punctually described, 
make not to them one moment, but rather seem to 
manifest the method and idea of the great work in the 
intellect of God, than the manner how he proceeded in 
its operation. I cannot dream that there should be at 
the last day any such judicial proceeding, or calling to 
the bar, as indeed the Scripture seems to imply, and the 
literal commentators do conceive ; for unspeakable mys- 
teries in the Scriptures are often delivered in a vulgar 
and illustrative way ; and being written unto man, are 
delivered, not as they truly are, but as they may be 
understood, wherein, notwithstanding, the different in- 
terpretations according to different capacities may stand 
firm with our devotion, nor be any way prejudicial to 
each single edification. 

XLVI. Now to determine the day and year of this 



I 



I 

I 



RELIGIO MEDICI. 83 

inevitable time, is not only convincible and statute-mad- 
ness, but also manifest impiety ; how shall we interpret 
Elias' six thousand years, or imagine the secret com- 
municated to a rabbi which God hath denied unto his 
angels? It had been an excellent query to have posed 
the devil of Delphos, and must needs have forced him to 
some strange amphibology; it hath not only mocked 
the predictions of sundry astrologers in ages past, but 
the prophecies of many melancholy heads in these pre- 
sent, who neither understanding reasonably things past 
or present pretend a knowledge of things to come; 
heads ordained only to manifest the incredible effects of 
melancholy, and to fulfil old prophecies* rather than be 
the authors of new. In those days there shall come 
wars, and rumours of wars, to me seems no prophecy, 
but a constant truth, in all things verified since it was 
pronounced : there shall be signs in the moon and stars; 
how comes he then like a thief in the night, when he 
gives an item of his coming ? That common sign 
drawn from the revelation of antichrist is as obscure as 
any ; in our common compute he hath been come these 
many years, but for my own part, to speak freely, I am 
half of opinion that antichrist is the philosophers' stone 
in divinity, for the discovery and invention whereof, 
though there be prescribed rules and probable inductions, 
yet hath hardly any man attained the perfect discovery 
thereof. That general opinion that the world grows 
near its end, hath possessed all ages past as nearly as 
ours ; I am afraid that the souls that now depart cannot 
escape that lingering expostulation of the saints under 
the altar, Quousque Domine 1 How long, O Lord ? and 
groan in the expectation of the great jubilee. 

* la those days there shall come liars and false prophets. 



84 RELIGIO MEDICI. 

XL VII. This is the day that must make good that 
great attribute of God, his justice ; that must reconcile 
those unanswerable doubts that torment the wisest un- 
derstandings ; and reduce those seeming inequaHties and 
respective distributions in this world, to an equality and 
recompensive justice in the next. This is that one day 
that shall include and comprehend all that went before it ; 
wherein, as in the last scene, all the actors must enter 
to complete and make up the catastrophe of this great 
piece. This is the day whose memory hath only power 
to make us honest in the dark, and to be virtuous with- 
out a witness. Ipsa suce pretium virtus sibi, that virtue 
is her own reward is but a cold principle, and not able 
to maintain our variable resolutions in a constant and 
settled way of goodness. I have practised that honest 
artifice of Seneca, and in my retired and solitary ima- 
ginations, to detain me from the foulness of vice have 
fancied to myself the presence of my dear and worthiest 
friends, before whom I should lose my head rather than 
be vicious ; yet herein I found that there was nought 
but moral honesty, and this was not to be virtuous for 
his sake who must reward us at the last. I have tried 
if I could reach that great resolution of his, to be honest 
without a thought of heaven or hell ; and indeed I found 
upon a natural inclination and imbred loyalty unto vir- 
tue, that I could serve her without a livery ; yet not in 
that resolved and venerable way but that the frailty of 
my nature, upon an easy temptation, might be induced 
to forget her. The life therefore and spirit of all our 
actions, is the resurrection, and a stable apprehension 
that our ashes shall enjoy the fruit of our pious endea- 
vours ; without this, all religion is a fallacy, and those 
impieties of Lucian, Euripides, and Julian, are no bias- 



I 



RELIGIO MEDICI. 85 

phemies, but subtle verities, and atheists have been the 
only philosophers. 

XL VIII. How shall the dead arise, is no question of 
my faith ; to believe only possibilities, is not faith, but 
mere philosophy ; many things are true in divinity which 
are neither inducible by reason, nor confirmable by 
sense ; and many things in philosophy confirmable 
by sense, yet not inducible by reason. Thus it is im- 
possible by any solid or demonstrative reasons to per- 
suade a man to believe the conversion of the needle to 
the north ; though this be possible, and true, and easily 
credible, upon a single experiment unto the sense. I 
believe that our estranged and divided ashes shall unite 
again ; that our separated dust after so many pilgrimages 
and transformations into the parts of minerals, plants, 
animals, elements, shall at the voice of God return into 
their primitive shapes, and join again to make up their 
primary and predestinate forms. As at the creation 
there was a separation of that confused mass into its 
species, so at the destruction thereof there shall be a 
separation into its distinct individuals. As at the crea- 
tion of the world, all the distinct species that we behold 
lay involved in one mass, till the fruitful voice of God 
separated this united multitude into its several species ; 
so at the last day, when those corrupted reliques shall 
be scattered in the wilderness of forms, and seem to 
have forgot their proper habits, God by a powerful 
voice shall command them back into their proper shapes, 
and call them out by their single individuals ; then shall 
appear the fertility of Adam, and the magick of that 
sperm that hath dilated into so many millions. I have 
often beheld as a miracle that artificial resurrection and 
revivification of mercury, how being mortified into a 

8 



86 RELIGIO MEDICI. 

thousand shapes, it assumes again its own, and returns 
into its numerical self. Let us speak naturally, and like 
philosophers, the forms of alterable bodies in these sen- 
sible corruptions perish not ; nor, as we imagine, wholly 
quit their mansions, but retire and contract themselves 
into their secret and unaccessible parts, where they may 
best protect themselves from the action of their antago- 
nist. A plant or vegetable consumed to ashes, to a 
contemplative and school philosopher seems utterly des- 
troyed, and the form to have taken his leave for ever ; 
but to a sensible artist the forms are not perished, but 
withdrawn into their incombustible part where they lie 
secure from the action of that devouring element. This 
is made good by experience, which can from the ashes 
of a plant revive the plant, and from its cinders recall 
it into its stalk and leaves again. What the art of man 
can do in these inferiour pieces, what blasphemy is it 
to affirm the finger of God cannot do in these more 
perfect and sensible structures ! This is that mystical 
philosophy from whence no true scholar becomes an 
atheist, but from the visible effects of nature grows up 
a real divine ; and beholds not in a dream, as Ezekiel, 
but in an ocular and visible object the types of his resur- 
rection. 

XLIX. Now the necessary mansions of our restored 
selves, are those two contrary and incompatible places 
we call heaven and hell ; to define them, or strictly to 
determine what and where these are, surpasseth my 
divinity. That elegant apostle which seemed to have a 
glimpse of heaven, hath left but a negative description 
thereof: which neither eye hath seen, nor ear hath 
heard, nor can enter into the heart of man : he was 
translated out of himself to behold it, but being re- 



RELIGIO MEDICI. 87 

turned into himself could not express it. St. John's 
description by emeralds, chrysolites, and precious 
stones, is too weak to express the material heaven we 
behold. Briefly therefore, where the soul hath the full 
measure, and complement of happiness ; where the 
boundless appetite of that spirit remains completely satis- 
fied, that it can neither desire addition nor alteration, that 
I think is truly heaven ; and this can only be in the enjoy- 
ment of that essence, whose infinite goodness is able to 
terminate the desires of itself, and the unsatiable wishes 
of ours,; wherever God will thus manifest himself, there 
is heaven, though within the circle of this sensible world. 
Thus the soul of man may be in heaven any where, 
even within the limits of his own proper body ; and 
when it ceaseth to live in the body it may remain in its 
own soul, that is, its Creator. And thus we may say 
that St. Paul, whether in the body or out of the body, 
was yet in heaven. To place it in the empyreal, or 
beyond the tenth sphere, is to forget the world's destruc- 
tion ; for when this sensible world shall be destroyed, 
all shall then be here as it is now there, an empyreal 
heaven, a quasi vacuity, when to ask where heaven is, 
is to demand where the presence of God is, or where 
we have the glory of that happy vision. Moses that 
was bred up in all the learning of the Egyptians, com- 
mitted a gross absurdity in philosophy, when with these 
eyes of flesh he desired to see God, and petitioned his 
Maker, that is truth itself, to a contradiction. Those 
that imagine heaven and hell neighbours, and conceive 
a vicinity between those two extremes, upon conse- 
quence of the parable, where Dives discoursed with 
Lazarus in Abraham's bosom, do too grossly conceive 
of those glorified creatures, whose eyes shall easily out- 



88 IlELIGIO MEDICI. 

see the sun, and behold without a perspective the ex- 
tremest distances ; for if there shall be in our glorified 
eyes the faculty of sight and reception of objects, I 
could think the visible species there to be in as unlimit- 
able a vray as novv^ the intellectual. I grant that tw^o 
bodies placed beyond the tenth sphere, or in a vacuity, 
according to Aristotle's philosophy, could not behold 
each other, because there wants a body or medium to 
hand and transport the visible rays of the object unto 
the sense ; but when there shall be a general defect of 
either medium to convey, or light to prepare and dis- 
pose that medium, and yet a perfect vision, we must 
suspend the rules of our philosophy, and make all good 
by a more absolute piece of opticks. 

L. I cannot tell how to say that fire is the essence 
of hell ; I know not what to make of purgatory, or con- 
ceive a flame that can either prey upon, or purify the 
substance of a soul ; those flames of sulphur mentioned 
in the Scriptures, I take not to be understood of this 
present hell, but of that to come, where fire shall make 
up the complement of our tortures, and have a body or 
subject wherein to manifest its tyranny. Some who 
have had the honour to be textuary in divinity, are of 
opinion it shall be the same specifical fire with ours. 
This is hard to conceive, yet can I make good how 
even that may prey upon our bodies, and yet not con- 
sume us ; for in this material world there are bodies 
that persist invincible in the powerfullest flames, and 
though by the action of fire they fall into ignition and 
liquation, yet will they never suffer a destruction. I would 
gladly know how Moses with an actual fire calcined, 
or burnt the golden calf unto powder ; for that mystical 
metal of gold, whose solary and celestial nature I 



RELIG.10 MEDICI. 89 

admire, exposed unto the violence of fire grows only- 
hot and liquifies, but consumeth not : so when the con- 
sumable and volatile pieces of our bodies shall be refined 
into a more impregnable and fixed temper like gold, 
though they suffer from the action of flames they shall 
never perish, but lie immortal in the arms of fire. And 
surely if this frame must suffer only by the action of this 
element, there will many bodies escape, and not only 
heaven, but earth will not be at an end, but rather a 
beginning ; for at present it is not earth, but a composi- 
tion of fire, water, earth, and air; but at that time, 
spoiled of these ingredients, it shall appear in a sub- 
stance more like itself, its ashes. Philosophers that 
opinioned the world's destruction by fire, did never 
dream of annihilation, which is beyond the power of 
sublunary causes ; for the last and proper action of that 
element is but vitrification, or a reduction of a body 
into glass ; and therefore some of our chymicks face- 
tiously affirm, that at the last fire all shall be crystallized 
and reverberated into glass, which is the utmost action 
of that element. Nor need we fear this term, annihila- 
tion, or wonder that God will destroy the works of 
his creation ; for man subsisting, who is, and will then 
truly appear a microcosm, the world cannot be said to 
be destroyed. For the eyes of God, and perhaps also 
of our glorified selves, shall as really behold and con- 
template the world in its epitome or contracted essence, 
as now it doth at large and in its dilated substance. In 
the seed of a plant, to the eyes of God and to the under- 
standing of man, there exists, though in an invisible 
way, the perfect leaves, flowers, and fruit thereof; (for 
things that are in posse to the sense, are actually exist- 
ent to the understanding.) Thus God beholds all things, 

8* 



90 



EELIGIO MEDICI. 



who contemplates as fully his works in their epitome as 
in their full volume ; and beheld as amply the whole 
world in that little compendium of the sixth day as in 
the scattered and dilated pieces of those five before. 

LI. Men commonly set forth the torments of hell by 
fire, and the extremity of corporal afflictions, and 
describe hell in the same method that Mahomet doth 
heaven. This indeed makes a noise, and drums in 
popular ears ; but if this be the terrible piece thereof it 
is not worthy to stand in diameter with heaven, whose 
happiness consists in that part that is best able to com- 
prehend it, that immortal essence, that translated 
divinity and colony of God, the soul. Surely though 
we place hell under earth, the devil's walk and purlieu 
is about it ; men speak too popularly who place it in 
those flaming mountains, which to grosser apprehen- 
sions represent hell. The heart of man is the place the 
devils dwell in ; I feel sometimes a hell within myself, 
Lucifer keeps his court in my breast. Legion is revived 
in me. There are as many hells, as Anaxagoras con- 
ceited worlds ; there was more than one hell in Magda- 
lene when there were seven devils ; for every devil is 
an hell unto himself; he holds enough of torture in his 
own uhi, and needs not the misery of circumference to 
afflict him ; and thus a distracted conscience here, is a 
shadow or introduction unto hell hereafter. Who can 
but pity the merciful intention of those hands that do 
destroy themselves 1 the devil were it in his power 
would do the like, w^hich being impossible his miseries 
are endless, and he suffers most in that attribute where- 
in he is impassible, his immortality. 

LII. I thank God, and with joy I mention it, I was 
never afraid of hell, nor never grew pale at the descrip- 



RELIGIO MEDICI. 91 

tion of that place ; I have so fixed my contemplations 
on heaven that I have almost forgot the idea of hell, and 
am afraid rather to lose the joys of the one than endure 
the misery of the other; to be deprived of them is a per- 
fect hell, and needs methinks no addition to complete our 
afflictions ; that terrible term hath never detained me 
from sin, nor do I owe any good action to the name 
thereof: I fear God, yet am not afraid of him ; his mer- 
cies make me ashamed of my sins, before his judgments 
afraid thereof; these are the forced and secondary 
method of his wisdom, which he useth but as the last 
remedy, and upon provocation ; a course rather to deter 
the wicked than incite the virtuous to his worship. I 
can hardly think there was ever any scared into 
heaven ; they go the fairest way to heaven that would 
serve God without a hell ; other mercenaries that crouch 
unto him in fear of hell, though they term themselves 
the servants, are indeed but the slaves of the Almighty. 
LIII. And to be true, and speak my soul, when I 
survey the occurrences of my Hfe, and call into account 
the finger of God, I can perceive nothing but an abyss 
and mass of mercies, either in general to mankind, or in 
particular to myself; and whether out of the prejudice of 
my affection, or an inverting and partial conceit of his 
mercies, I know not, but those which others term 
crosses, afflictions, judgments, misfortunes, to me who 
inquire farther into them than their visible effects, they 
both appear, and in event have ever proved the secret 
and dissembled favours of his affection. It is a singular 
piece of wisdom to apprehend truly and without passion, 
the works of God ; and so well to distinguish his justice 
from his mercy as not to miscal those noble attributes ; 
yet it is likewise an honest piece of logick, so to dispute 



92 RELIGIO MEDICI. 

and argue the proceedings of God, as to distinguish even 
his judgments into mercies. For God is merciful unto 
all, because better to the worst than the best deserve ; 
and to say he punisheth none in this world, though it 
be a paradox, is no absurdity. To one that hath com- 
mitted murder, if the judge should only ordain a fine, it 
were a madness to call this a punishment, and to repine 
at the sentence rather than admire the clemency of the 
judge. Thus our offences being mortal, and deserving 
not only death, but damnation, if the goodness of God be 
content to traverse and pass them over with a loss, mis- 
fortune, or disease, what frenzy were it to term this a 
punishment, rather than an extremity of mercy, and to 
groan under the rod of his judgments, rather than ad- 
mire the sceptre of his mercies ! Therefore to adore, 
honour, and admire him, is a debt of gratitude due from 
the obligation of our nature, states, and conditions ; and 
with these thoughts, he that knows them best will not 
deny that I adore him : that I obtain heaven, and the 
bliss thereof,"is accidental, and not the intended work 
of my devotion ; it being a felicity I can neither think 
to deserve, nor scarce in modesty to expect. For these 
two ends of us all, either as rewards or punishments, 
are mercifully ordained and disproportionably disposed 
unto our actions ; the one being so far beyond our deserts, 
the other so infinitely below our demerits. 

LIV. There is no salvation to those that believe not 
in Christ, that is, say some, since his nativity, and as 
divinity affirmeth, before also ; which makes me much 
apprehend the ends of those honest worthies and philo- 
sophers which died before his incarnation. It is hard 
to place those souls in hell whose worthy lives do teach 
us virtue on earth ; methinks amongst those many sub- 



RELIGIO MEDICI. 93 

divisions of hell, there might have been one limbo left 
for these ; what a strange vision will it be to see their 
poetical fictions converted into verities, and their ima- 
gined and fancied furies into real devils ! how strange 
to them will sound the history of Adam, when they shall 
suflSer for him they never heard of; when they who de- 
rive their genealogy from the gods, shall know they are 
the unhappy issue of sinful man ! It is an insolent part 
of reason to controvert the works of God, or question 
the justice of his proceedings: could humility teach 
other, as it hath instructed me, to contemplate the infinite 
and incomprehensible distance betwixt the Creator and 
the creature ; or did we seriously perpend that one simile 
of St. Paul, shall the vessel say to the potter, why hast 
thou made me thus 1 it would prevent these arrogant 
disputes of reason, nor would we argue the definitive 
sentence of God, either to heaven or hell. Men that 
live according to the right rule and law of reason, live 
but in their own kind, as beasts do in theirs ; who justly 
obey the prescript of their natures, and therefore cannot 
reasonably demand a reward of their actions, as only 
obeying the natural dictates of their reason. It will 
therefore, and must at last appear, that all salvation is 
through Christ ; which verity I fear these great exam- 
ples of virtue must confirm, and make it good how the 
perfectest actions of earth have no title or claim unto 
heaven. 

LV. Nor truly do I think the lives of these or of any 
other were ever correspondent, or in all points con- 
formable unto their doctrines. It is evident that Aristo- 
tle transgressed the rule of his own ethicks ; the stoicks 
that condemn passion, and command a man to laugh in 
Phalaris his bull, could not endure without a groan 



94 RELIGIO MEDICI. 

a fit of the stone or colick ; the scepticks that affirmed 
they knew nothing, even in that opinion confute them- 
selves, and thought they knew more than all the world 
beside. Diogenes I hold to be the most vain-glorious 
man of his time, and more ambitious in refusing all 
honours, than Alexander in rejecting none. Vice and 
the devil put a fallacy upon our reasons, and provoking 
us too hastily to run from it, entangle and profound us 
deeper in it. The duke of Venice, that weds himself 
unto the sea by a ring of gold, I will not argue of prodi- 
gality, because it is a solemnity of good use and conse- 
quence in the state ; but the philosopher that threw his 
money into the sea to avoid avarice, was a notorious 
prodigal. There is no road or ready way to virtue, it 
is not an easy point of art to disentangle ourselves from 
this riddle, or web of sin ; to perfect virtue, as to reli- 
gion, there is required a panopUa, or complete armour ; 
that whilst we lie at close ward against one vice, we 
lie not open to the venny of another. And indeed wiser 
discretions that have the thread of reason to conduct 
them, offend without a pardon; whereas under-heads 
may stumble without dishonour. There go so many 
circumstances to piece up one good action, that it is a 
lesson to be good, and we are forced to be virtuous by 
the book. Again, the practice of men holds not an 
equal pace, yea, and often runs counter to their theory ; 
we naturally know what is good, but naturally pursue 
what is evil ; the rhetorick wherewith I persuade ano- 
ther, cannot persuade myself; there is a depraved ap- 
petite in us, that will with patience hear the learned 
instructions of reason, but yet perform no farther than 
agrees to its own irregular humour. In brief, we are 
all monsters, that is, a composition of man and beast ; 



I 



J 



RELIGIO MEDICI. 96 

wherein we must endeavour to be as the poets fancy- 
that wise man Chiron, that is, to have the region of man 
above that of beast, and sense to sit but at the feet of 
reason. Lastly, I do desire with God, that all, but yet 
affirm with men, that few shall know salvation ; that 
the bridge is narrow, the passage straight unto life; yet 
those who do confine the church of God, either to par- 
ticular nations, churches, or families, have made it far 
narrower than our Saviour ever meant it. 

LVI. The vulgarity of those judgments that wrap 
the church of God in Strabo's cloak, and restrain it 
unto Europe, seem to me as bad geographers as Alex- 
ander, who thought he had conquered all the world 
when he had not subdued the half of any part thereof. 
For we cannot deny the church of God both in Asia 
and Africa, if we do not forget the peregrinations of the 
apostles, the deaths of the martyrs, the sessions of many, 
and, even in our reformed judgment, lawful councils, 
held in those parts in the minority and nonage of ours. 
Nor must a few differences, more remarkable in the 
eyes of man than perhaps in the judgment of God, ex- 
communicate from heaven one another ; much less 
those Christians who are in a manner all martyrs, 
maintaining their faith in the noble way of persecution, 
and serving God in the fire, whereas we honour him 
but in the sunshine. 'Tis true, we all hold there is a 
number of elect, and many to be saved ; yet take our 
opinions together, and from the confusion thereof there 
will be no such thing as salvation, nor shall any one be 
saved : for first, the church of Rome condemneth us, 
we likewise them ; the sub-reformists and sectaries 
sentence the doctrine of our church as damnable; the 
atomist, or familist, reprobates all these, and all these 



96 RELIGIO MEDICI. 

them again. Thus whilst the mercies of God do promise 
us heaven, our conceits and opinions exclude us from 
that place. There must be therefore more than one St. 
Peter ; particular churches and sects usurp the gates of 
heaven, and turn the key against each other ; and thus 
we go to heaven against each other's wills, conceits, 
and opinions, and with as much uncharity as ignorance 
do err I fear, in points not only of our own but one 
another's salvation. 

LVIL I believe many are saved who to man seem 
reprobated, and many are reprobated who in the opinion 
and sentence of man stand elected. There will appear 
at the last day strange and unexpected examples, both 
of his justice and his mercy, and therefore to define 
either, is folly in man, and insolency even in the devils ; 
those acute and subtile spirits in all their sagacity can 
hardly divine who shall be saved ; which if they could 
prognostick, their labour were at an end, nor need they 
compass the earth, seeking whom they may devour. 
Those who upon a rigid application of the law sentence 
Solomon unto damnation, condemn not only him, but 
themselves, and the whole world ; for by the letter, and 
written word of God, we are without exception in the 
state of death ; but there is a prerogative of God, and 
an arbitrary pleasure above the letter of his own law, 
by which alone we can pretend unto salvation, and 
through which Solomon might be as easily saved as 
those who condemn him. 

LVIII. The number of those who pretend unto salva- 
tion, and those infinite swarms who think to pass through 
the eye of this needle, have much amazed me. That 
name and compellation of ' little flock' doth not comfort 
but deject my devotion, especially when I reflect upon 



RELIGIO MEDICI. 1)7 

mine own unworthiness, wherein according to my 
humble apprehensions, I am below them all. I believe 
there shall never be an anarchy in heaven, but as there 
are hierarchies amongst the angels, so shall there be 
degrees of priority amongst the saints. Yet is it (I pro- 
test) beyond my ambition to aspire unto the first ranks ; 
my desires only are, and I shall be happy therein, to be 
but the last man, and bring up the rear in heaven. 

LIX. Again, I am confident, and fully persuaded, 
yet dare not take my oath of my salvation : 1 am as it 
were sure, and do believe without all doubt, that there 
is such a city as Constantinople ; yet for me to take my 
oath thereon were a kind of perjury, because I hold no 
infallible warrant from my own sense to confirm me in 
the certainty thereof And truly, though many pretend 
to absolute certainty of their salvation, yet when an 
humble soul shall contemplate her own unworthiness, 
she shall meet with many doubts, and suddenly find how- 
little we stand in need of the precept of St. Paul, work 
out your salvation with fear and trembling. That which 
is the cause of my election, I hold to be the cause of 
my salvation, which was the mercy and beneplacit of 
God, before I was, or the foundation of the world. Be- 
fore Abraham was, I am, is the saying of Christ ; yet 
is it true in some sense if I say it of myself; for I was 
not only before myself, but Adam, that is, in the idea of 
God, and the decree of that synod held from all eternity. 
And in this sense, I say, the world was before the crea- 
tion, and at an end before it had a beginning ; and thus 
was I dead before I was alive ; though my grave be 
England, my dying place was paradise, and Eve mis- 
carried of me, before she conceived of Cain. 

LX. Insolent zeals that do decry good works and 
9 



98 RELIGIO MEDICI. 

rely only upon faith, take not away merit ; for depend- 
ing upon the efficacy of their faith, they enforce the con- 
dition of God, and in a more sophistical way do seem to 
challenge heaven. It was decreed by God, that only 
those that lapt in the water like dogs should have the 
honour to destroy the Midianites ; yet could none of those 
justly challenge, or imagine he deserved that honour 
thereupon. I do not deny but that true faith, and such 
as God requires, is not only a mark or token but also a 
means of our salvation ; but where to find this, is as ob- 
scure to me as my last end. And if our Saviour could 
object unto his own disciples and favourites, a faith, 
that to the quantity of a grain of mustard-seed is able to 
remove mountains ; surely that which we boast of is 
not any thing, or at the most but a remove from nothing. 
This is the tenour of my belief; wherein, though 
there be many things singular, and to the humour of my 
irregular self, yet if they square not with maturer judg- 
ments I disclaim them, and do no further father them, 
than the learned and best judgments shall authorize 
them. 



THE SECO.ND PART. 

I. Now for that other virtue of charity, without 
which faith is a mere notion, and of no existence, I have 
ever endeavoured to nourish the merciful disposition and 
humane incUnation I borrowed from my parents, and 
regulate it to the written and prescribed laws of charity : 
and if I hold the true anatomy of myself, I am deline- 
ated and naturally framed to such a piece of virtue. For 
I am of a constitution so general, that it consorts and 
sympathizeth with all things ; I have no antipathy, or 
rather idiosyncrasy, in diet, humour, air, any thing ; I 
wonder not at the French for their dishes of frogs, 
snails, and toadstools, nor at the Jews for locusts and 
grasshoppers ; but being amongst them, make them my 
common viands ; and I find they agree with my stomach 
as well as theirs. 1 could digest a salad gathered in a 
church-yard, as well as in a garden. I cannot start at 
the presence of a serpent, scorpion, lizard, or salaman- 
der ; at the sight of a toad, or viper, I find in me no 
desire to take up a stone to destroy them. I feel not in 
myself those common antipathies that I can discover in 
others ; those national repugnances do not touch me, nor 
do I behold with prejudice the French, Italian, Spaniard, 
or Dutch ; but where I find their actions in balance with 
my countrymen's, I honour, love, and embrace them in 
the same degree. I was born in the eighth climate, but 



100 RELIGIO MEDICI. 



<i 



seem for to be framed and constellated unto all ; I am 
no plant that will not prosper out of a garden ; all places, 
all airs make unto me one country ; I am in England 
every where, and under any meridian. I have been 
shipwreckt, yet am not enemy with the sea or winds ; I 
can study, play, or sleep, in a tempest. In brief, I am 
averse from nothing ; my conscience would give me the 
lie if I should say I absolutely detest or hate any essence 
but the devil ; or so at least abhor any thing but that we 
might come to composition. If there be any among 
those common objects of hatred I do contemn and laugh 
at, it is that great enemy of reason, virtue, and religion, 
the multitude ; that numerous piece of monstrosity, which 
taken asunder seem men, and the reasonable creatures 
of God, but confused together, make but one great 
beast, and a monstrosity more prodigious than hydra ; 
it is no breach of charity to call these fools ; it is the 
style all holy writers have afforded them, set down by 
Solomon in canonical Scripture, and a point of our 
faith to believe so. Neither in the name of multitude 
do I only include the base and minor sort of people ; 
there is a rabble even amongst the gentry, a sort of 
plebeian heads, whose fancy moves with the same 
wheel as these ; men in the same level with mechanicks, 
though their fortunes do somewhat gild their infirmities, 
and their purses compound for their follies. But as in 
casting account, three or four men together come short 
in account of one man placed by himself below them ; 
so neither are a troop of these ignorant doradoes, of that 
true esteem and value as many a forlorn person, whose 
condition doth place him below their feet. Let us speak 
like politicians, there is a nobility without heraldry, a 
natural dignity, whereby one man is ranked with 



RELIGIO MEDICI. 101 

another, another filed before him, according to the 
quaUty of his desert, and preeminence of his good 
parts. Though the corruption of these times, and the 
bias of present practice wheel another way, thus it was 
in the first and primitive commonwealths, and is yet in 
the integrity and cradle of well-ordered polities, till 
• corruption getteth ground ; ruder desires labouring 
after that which wiser considerations contemn ; every 
one having a liberty to amass and heap up riches, and 
they a license or faculty to do or purchase any thing. 

II. This general and indifferent temper of mine, doth 
more nearly dispose rae to this noble virtue. It is a 
happiness to be born and framed unto virtue, and to 
grow up from the seeds of nature, rather than the in- 
oculation and forced graffs of education ; yet if we are 
directed only by our particular natures, and regulate 
our inclinations by no higher rule than that of our 
reasons, we are but moralists ; divinity will still call us 
heathens. Therefore this great work of charity must 
have other motives, ends, and impulsions : I give no 
alms to satisfy the hunger of my brother, but to fulfil 
and accomplish the will and command of my God ; I 
draw not my purse for his sake that demands it, but his 
that enjoined it ; I relieve no man upon the rhetorick of 
his miseries, nor to content mine own commiserating 
disposition ; for this is still but moral charity, and an 
act that oweth more to passion than reason. He that 
relieves another upon the bare suggestion and bowels 
of pity, doth not this so much for his sake as for his 
own ; for by compassion we make others' misery our 
own, and so by relieving them, we relieve ourselves 
also. It is as erroneous a conceit to redress other 
men's misfortunes upon the common considerations of 

9* 



102 RELIGIO MEDICI. 

merciful natures, that it may be one day our own case ; 
for this is a sinister and politick kind of charity, whereby 
we seem to bespeak the pities of men in the like occa- 
sions ; and truly I have observed that those professed 
eleemosynaries though in a crowd or multitude, do yet 
direct and place their petitions on a few and selected 
persons ; there is surely a physiognomy, which those* 
experienced and master mendicants observe, whereby 
thiey instantly discover a merciful aspect, and will single 
out a face wherein they spy the signatures and marks 
of mercy ; for there are mystically in our faces certain 
characters which carry in them the motto of our souls, 
wherein he that cannot read A. B. C. may read our 
natures. I hold moreover that there is a phytognomy, 
or physiognomy, not only of men, but of plants and 
vegetables ; and in every one of them some outward 
figures which hang as signs or bushes of their inward 
forms. The finger of God hath left an inscription 
upon all his works, not graphical or composed of letters, 
but of their several forms, constitutions, parts, and 
operations ; which aptly joined together do make one 
word that doth express their natures. By these letters 
God calls the stars by their names, and by this alphabet 
Adam assigned to every creature a name peculiar to its 
nature. Now there are besides these characters in our 
faces, certain mystical figures in our hands, which I 
dare not call mere dashes, strokes d. la volee, or at 
random, because delineated by a pencil that never 
works in vain ; and hereof 1 take more particular 
notice, because I carry that in mine own hand, which I 
could never read of, nor discover in another. Aristotle, 
I confess, in his acute and singular book of physiog- 
nomy, hath made no mention of chiromancy; yet I 



RELIGIO MEDICI. 103 

believe the Egyptians, wiio were nearer addicted to 
those abtruse and mystical sciences, had a knowledge 
therein ; to which those vagabond and counterfeit 
Egyptians did after pretend, and perhaps retained a few 
corrupted principles, which sometimes might verify 
their prognosticks. 

It is the common wonder of all men, how among so 
many millions of faces there should be none alike ; now 
contrary, I wonder as much how there should be any. 
He that shall consider how many thousand several 
words have been carelessly and without study com- 
posed out of twenty-four letters ; withal how many 
hundred lines there are to be drawn in the fabrick of 
one man, shall easily find that this variety is necessary ; 
and it will be very hard that they shall so concur as to 
make one portrait like another. Let a painter carelessly 
limn out a million of faces, and you shall find them all 
different; yea let ^ him have his copy before him, yet 
after all his art there Avill remain a sensible distinction ; 
for the pattern or example of every thing is the perfect- 
est in that kind, whereof we still come short though we 
transcend or go beyond it, because herein it is wide 
and agrees not in all points unto its copy. Nor doth the 
similitude of creatures disparage the variety of nature, 
nor any way confound the works of God : for even in 
things alike there is diversity, and those that do seem 
to accord do manifestly disagree. And thus is man 
like God, for in the same things that we resemble him 
we are utterly difierent from him. There was never 
any thing so like another as in all points to concur ; 
there will ever some reserved difference slip in, to pre- 
vent the identity ; without M'hich, two several things 
would not be alike, but the same, which is impossible. 



104 RELIGIO MEDICI. 

III. But to return from philosophy to charity ; I hold 
not so narrow a conceit of this virtue as to conceive that 
to give alms is only to be charitable, or think a piece of 
liberality can comprehend the total of charity. Divinity 
hath wisely divided the act thereof into many branches,- 
and hath taught us in this narrow way many paths unto 
goodness ; as many ways as we may do good, so many 
ways we may be charitable ; there are infirmities, not 
only of body, but of soul, and fortunes, which do require 
the merciful hand of our abilities. I cannot contemn a 
man for ignorance, but behold him with as much pity 
as I do Lazarus. It is no greater charity to clothe his 
body, than apparel the nakedness of his soul. It is an 
honourable object to see the reasons of other, men wear 
our liveries, and their borrowed understandings do 
homage to the bounty of ours ; it is the cheapest way of 
beneficence, and like the natural charity of the sun illu- 
minates another without obscuring itself. To be reserved 
and caitift' in this part of goodness, is the sordidest piece 
of covetousness, and more contemptible than the pecu- 
niary avarice. To this (as calling myself a scholar) I 
am obliged by the duty of my condition ; I make not 
therefore my head a grave, but a treasure of knowledge ; 
I intend no monopoly, but a community in learning ; I 
study not for my own sake only, but for theirs that 
study not for themselves. I envy no man that knows 
more than myself, but pity them that know less. I in- 
struct no man as an exercise of my knowledge, or with 
an intent rather to nourish and keep it aUve in mine own 
head than beget and propagate it in his ; and in the 
midst of all my endeavours there is but one thought that 
dejects me, that my acquired parts must perish with 
myself, nor can be legacied among my honoured friends. 



I 



RELIGIO MEDICI. 105 

I cannot fall out or contemn a man for an errour, or 
conceive why a difierence in opinion should divide an 
affection ; for controversies, disputes, and argumenta- 
tions, both in philosophy and in divinity, if they meet 
with discreet and peaceable natures, do not infringe the 
laws of charity : in all disputes, so much as there is of 
passion, so much there is of nothing to the purpose ; for 
then reason, like a bad hound, spends upon a false scent, 
and forsakes the question first started. And this is one 
reason why controversies are never determined ; for 
though they be amply proposed, they are scarce at all 
handled, they do so swell with unnecessary digressions, 
and the parenthesis on the party is often as large as the 
main discourse upon the subject. The foundations of 
religion are already established, and the principles of 
salvation subscribed unto by all ; there remain not many 
controversies worth a passion, and yet never -any dis- 
puted without, not only in divinity but inferiour arts. 
What a ^a-TpaxoiJ^vop^axta, and hot skirmish is betwixt S. 
and T. in Lucian. How do grammarians hack and 
slash for the genitive case in Jupiter ! how^ do they break 
their own pates to salve that of Priscian ! Si foret in 
terris, rideret Dcmocritus. Yea even amongst wiser 
militants, how many wounds have been given, and credits 
slain, for the poor victory of an opinion or beggarly 
conquest of a distinction ! Scholars are men of peace, 
they bear no arms, but their tongues are sharper than 
Actus his razor; their pens carry farther and give a 
louder report than thunder ; I had rather stand in the 
shock of a basilisco, than in the fury of a merciless pen. 
It is not mere zeal to learning, or devotion to the muses, 
that wiser princes patron the arts and carry an indul- 
gent aspect unto scholars ; but a desire to have their 



106 RELIGIO MEDICI. 



1 



names eternized by the memory of their writings, and a 
fear of the revengeful pen of succeeding ages ; for these 
are the men, that when they have played their parts, and 
had their exits, must step out and give the moral of their 
scenes, and deliver unto posterity an inventory of their 
virtues and vices. And surely there goes a great deal 
of conscience to the compiling of an history ; there is no 
reproach to the scandal of a story; it is such an authen- 
tick kind of falsehood that with authority belies our 
good names to all nations and posterity. 

IV. There is another offence unto charity, which no 
author hath ever written of, and few take notice of; and 
that's the reproach, not of whole professions, mysteries, 
and conditions, but of whole nations ; wherein by op- 
probrious epithets we miscal each other, and by an un- 
charitable logick, from a disposition in a few conclude 
a habit yi all : 

Le mutin Anglois, et le bravache Escossois ; 

Le Italien, et le fol Frangois ; 

Le poultron Romain, le larron de Gascongne ; 
L'Espagnol superbe, ct I'Aleman ivrongne. 

St. Paul, that calls the Cretians liars, doth it but indi- 
rectly and upon quotation of their own poet. It is as 
bloody a thought in one way as Nero's was in another ; 
for by a word we wound a thousand, and at one blow 
assassine the honour of a nation. It is as complete a 
piece of madness to miscal and rave against the times, 
or think to recall men to reason by a fit of passion ; 
Democritus, that thought to laugh the times into good- 
ness, seems to me as deeply hypochondriack as Hera- 
clitus that bewailed them. It moves not my spleen to 
behold the multitude in their proper humours, that is. 



RELIGIO MEDICI. 107 

in their fits of folly and madness, as well understanding 
that wisdom is not profaned unto the world, and 'tis the 
privilege of a few to be virtuous. They that endeavour 
to abolish vice destroy also virtue, for contraries, though 
they destroy one another, are yet the life of one another. 
Thus virtue (abolish vice) is an idea ; again, the com- 
munity of sin doth not disparage goodness ; for when 
vice gains upon the major part, virtue, in whom it re- 
mains becomes more excellent ; and being lost in some, 
multiplies its goodness in others which remain untouched, 
and persists intire in the general inundation. I can 
therefore behold vice without a satire, content only with 
an admonition, or instructive reprehension; for noble 
natures, and such as are capable of goodness, are railed 
into vice, that might as easily be admonished into virtue ; 
and we should be all so far the orators of goodness, as 
to protect her from the power of vice, and maintain the 
cause of injured truth. No man can justly censure or 
condemn another, because indeed no man truly knows 
another. This I perceive in myself, for I am in the 
dark to all the world, and my nearest friends behold me 
but in a cloud ; those that know me but superficially, 
think less of me than I do of myself, those of my near 
acquaintance think more ; God, who truly knows me, 
knows that I am nothing ; for he only beholds me, and 
all the world, who looks not on us through a derived 
ray, or a trajection of a sensible species, but beholds the 
substance without the helps of accidents, and the forms 
of things as we their operations. Further, no man can 
judge another, because no man knows himself; for we 
censure others but as they disagree from that humour 
which we fancy laudable in ourselves, and commend 
t>thers but for that wherein they seem to quadrate and 



108 



RELIGIO MEDICI. 



consent with us. So that in conclusion, all is but that 
we all condemn, self-love. 'Tis the general complaint 
of these times, and perhaps of those past, that charity 
grows cold ; which I perceive most verified in those 
which most do manifest the fires and flames of zeal ; for 
it is a virtue that best agrees with coldest natures, and 
such as are complexioned for humility. But how shall 
we expect charity towards others when we are un- 
charitable to ourselves ? Charity begins at home, is the 
voice of the world ; yet is every man his greatest 
enemy, and as it were, his own executioner. A'on occides. 
is the commandment of God, yet scarce observed by 
any man ; for I perceive every man is his own Atropos, 
and lends a hand to cut the thread of his own days. 
Cain was not therefore the first murderer, but Adam, 
who brought in death ; whereof he beheld the practice 
and example in his own son Abel, and saw that verified 
in the experience of another which faith could not per- 
suade him in the theory of himself. 

V. There is I think no man that apprehends his own 
miseries less than myself, and no man that so nearly 
apprehends another's. I could lose an arm without a 
tear, and with few groans methinks be quartered into 
pieces ; yet can I weep most seriously at a play, and 
receive with a true passion the counterfeit griefs of those 
known and professed impostures. It is a barbarous part 
of inhumanity to add unto any afflicted party's misery, 
or endeavour to multiply in any man, a passion whose 
single nature is already above his patience ; this was 
the greatest affliction of Job, and those oblique expostu- 
lations of his friends a deeper injury than the downright 
blows of the devil It is not the tears of our own eyes 
only, but of our friends also, that do exhaust the current 



I 



RELIGIO MEDICI. 109 

of our sorrows, which falHng into many streams, runs 
more peaceably, and is contented with a narrower 
channel. It is an act within the power of charity, to 
translate a passion out of one breast into another, and 
to divide a sorrow almost out of itself; for an affliction 
like a dimension may be so divided, as if not indivisible, 
at least to become insensible. Now with my friend I 
desire not to share or participate, but to engross his 
sorrows, that by making them mine own I may more 
easily discuss them ; for in mine own reason, and within 
myself, I can command that, which I cannot intreat with- 
out myself, and within the circle of another. I have often 
thought those noble pairs and examples of friendship 
not so truly histories of what had been, as fictions of 
what should be ; but I now perceive nothing in them 
but possibilities, nor any thing in the heroick examples 
of Damon and Pythias, Achilles and Patroclus, which 
methinks upon some grounds I could not perform within 
the narrow compass of myself. That a man should lay 
down his life for his friend, seems strange to vulgar 
affections and such as confine themselves within that 
worldly principle, charity begins at home. For my 
own part, I could never remember the relations that I 
held unto myself nor the respect that I owe unto my 
own nature, in the cause of God, my country, and my 
friends. Next to these three I do embrace myself: I 
confess I do not observe that order that the schools or- 
dain our affections, to love our parents, wives, children, 
and then our friends ; for excepting the injunctions of 
religion, I do not find in myself such a necessary and 
indissoluble sympathy to all those of my blood. I hope 
I do not break the fifth commandment if I conceive I 
may love my friend before the nearest of my blood, even 

10 



110 RELIGIO MEDICI. 

those to whom I owe the principles of life ; I never yet cast 
a true affection on a woman, but I have loved my friend 
as I do virtue, my soul, my God. From hence methinks 
I do conceive how God loves man, what happiness there 
is in the love of God. Omitting all other, there are 
three most mystical unions ; two natures in one person ; 
three persons in one nature ; one soul in two bodies. 
For though indeed they be really divided, yet are they 
so united as they seem but one, and make rather a duality 
than two distinct souls. 

VI. There are wonders in true affection ; it is a body 
of enigmas, mysteries, and riddles, wherein two so be- 
come one, as they both become two : I love my friend 
before myself, and yet methinks I do not love him 
enough ; some few months hence my multiplied affec- 
tion will make me believe I have not loved him at all ; 
when I am from him I am dead till I be with him, 
when I am with him I am not satisfied, but would still 
be nearer him. United souls are not satisfied with em- 
braces, but desire to be truly each other ; which being 
impossible, their desires are infinite, and must proceed 
without a possibility of satisfaction. Another misery 
there is in affection ; that whom we truly love, like our 
own we forget their looks, nor can our memory retain 
the idea of their faces ; and it is no wonder, for they 
are ourselves, and our affection makes their looks our 
own. This noble affection falls not on vulgar and com- 
mon constitutions, but on such as are markt for virtue; 
he that can love his friend with this noble ardour, will 
in a competent degree affect all. Now if we can bring 
our affections to look beyond the body, and cast an eye 
upon the soul, we have found out the true object, not 
only of friendship but charity ; and the greatest happi 



1 



RELIGIO MEDICI. Ill 

ness that we can bequeath the soul, is that wherein we 
all do place our last felicity, salvation ; which though it 
be not in our power to bestow, it is in our charity and 
pious invocations to desire, if not procure and further. 
I cannot contentedly frame a prayer for myself in par- 
ticular, without a catalogue for my friends, nor request 
a happiness wherein my sociable disposition doth not 
desire the fellowship of my neighbour. I never hear 
the toll of a passing-bell, though in my mirth, without 
my prayers and best wishes for the departing spirit ; I 
cannot go to cure the body of my patient but I forget 
my profession and call unto God for his soul ; I cannot 
see one say his prayers, but instead of imitating him I 
fall into a supplication for him, who perhaps is no more 
to me than a common nature ; and if God hath vouch- 
safed an ear to my supplications there are surely many 
happy that never saw me, and enjoy the blessing of 
mine unknown devotions. To pray for enemies, that 
is, for their salvation, is no harsh precept, but the prac- 
tice of our daily and ordinary devotions. I cannot be- 
lieve the story of the Italian ; our bad wishes and un- 
charitable desires proceed no further than this life ; it 
is the devil, and the uncharitable votes of hell, that de- 
sire our misery in the world to come. 

VII. To do no injury, nor take none, was a principle 
which to my former years and impatient affections 
seemed to contain enough of morality; but my more 
settled years and Christian constitution have fallen upon 
severer resolutions. I can hold there is no such thing 
as injury ; that if there be, there is no such injury as 
revenge, and no such revenge as the contempt of an 
injury; that to hate another, is to malign himself; that 
the truest way to love another, is to despise ourselves. 



112 UELIGIO MEDICI. 

I were unjust unto mine own conscience if I should say 
I am at variance with any thing hke myself; I find 
there are many pieces in this one fabrick of man ; this 
frame is raised upon a mass of antipathies ; I am one 
methinks but as the world ; wherein notwithstanding 
there are a swarm of distinct essences, and in them an- 
other world of contrarieties ; we carry private and do- 
mestick enemies within, publick and more hostile adver- 
saries without. The devil that did but buffet St. Paul, 
plays methinks at sharp with me ; let me be nothing, if 
within the compass of myself I do not find the battle of 
Lepanto, passion against reason, reason against faith, 
faith against the devil, and my conscience against all. 
There is another man within me that's angry with me, 
rebukes, commands, and dastards me. I have no con- 
science of marble to resist the hammer of more heavy 
offences ; nor yet so soft and waxen as to take the im- 
pression of each single peccadillo or scape of infirmity ; 
I am of a strange belief, that it is as easy to be forgiven 
some sins, as to commit some others. For my original 
sin, I hold it to be washed away in my baptism ; for 
my actual transgressions, I compute and reckon with 
God, but from my last repentance, sacrament, or gene- 
ral absolution ; and therefore am not terrified with the 
sins or madness of my youth. I thank the goodness of 
God I have no sins that want a name, I am not singu- 
lar in offences, my transgressions are epidemical, and 
from the common breath of our corruption. For there 
are certain tempers of body, which matcht with an hu- 
morous depravity of mind, do hatch and produce vitio- 
sities whose newness and monstrosity of nature admits 
no name ; this was the temper of that lecher that car- 
nailed with a statua, and the constitution of Nero in his 



RELIGIO MEDICI. 113 

spintrian recreations. For the heavens are not only 
fruitful in new and unheard-of stars, the earth in plants 
and animals, but men's minds also in villany and vices ; 
now the dulness of my reason and the vulgarity of my 
disposition, never prompted my invention, nor solicited 
my affection unto any of these ; yet even those common 
and quotidian infirmities that so necessarily attend me, 
and do seem to be my very nature, have so dejected 
me, so broken the estimation that I should have other- 
wise of myself, that I repute myself the most abjectest 
piece of mortality. Divines prescribe a fit of sorrow^ 
to repentance ; there goes indignation, anger, sorrow, 
hatred, into mine ; passions of a contrary nature, which 
neither seem to suit with this action, nor my proper 
constitution. It is no breach of charity to ourselves to 
be at variance with our vices ; nor to abhor that part 
of us which is an enemy to the ground of charity, our 
God ; wherein we do but imitate our great selves the 
world, whose divided antipathies and contrary faces do 
yet carry a charitable regard unto the whole ; by their 
particular discords preserving the common harmony, 
and keeping in fetters those powers whose rebellions 
once masters might be the ruin of all. 

VIII. I thank God, amongst those millions of vices 
I do inherit and hold from Adam, I have escaped one, 
and that a mortal enemy to charity ; the first and father- 
sin, not only of man but of the devil, pride ; a vice 
whose name is comprehended in a monosyllable, but in 
its nature not circumscribed with a world. I have 
escaped it in a condition that can hardly avoid it : those 
petty acquisitions and reputed perfections that advance 
and elevate the conceits of other men, add no feathers 
unto mine : I have seen a grammarian tower and plume 

10* 



114 



RELIGIO MEDICI. 



himself over a single line in Horace, and show more 
pride in the construction of one ode than the author in 
the composure of the whole book. For my own part, 
besides the jargon and patois of several provinces, I 
understand no less than six languages ; yet I protest I 
have no higher conceit of myself than had our fathers 
before the confusion of Babel, when there was but one 
language in the world, and none to boast himself either _ 
linguist or critick. I have not only seen several coun- 1 
tries, beheld the nature of their climes, the chorography 
of their provinces, topography of their cities, but under- 
stood their several laws, customs, and policies ; yet can- 
not all this persuade the dulness of my spirit unto such 
an opinion of myself, as I behold in nimbler and con- 
ceited heads that never looked a degree beyond their 
nests. I know. the names, and somewhat more, of all 
the constellations in my horizon ; yet I have seen a 
prating mariner that could only name the pointers and 
the north star, out-talk me, and conceit himself a whole 
sphere above me. I know most of the plants of my 
country and of those about me ; yet methinks I do not 
know so many as when I did but know a hundred, and 
had scarcely ever simpled further than Cheapside. For 
indeed, heads of capacity and such as are not full with 
a handful or easy measure of knowledge, think they 
know nothing till they know all ; which being impossi- 
ble, they fall upon the opinion of Socrates, and only 
know they know not any thing. I cannot think that 
Homer pined away upon the riddle of the fisherman, or 
that Aristotle, who understood the uncertainty of know- 
ledge, and confessed so often the reason of man too 
weak for the works of nature, did ever drown himself 
upon the flux and reflux of Euripus. We do but learn 



J 



RELIGIO MEDICI. 115 

to day, what our better advanced judgments will un- 
teach to morrow ; and Aristotle doth but instruct us as 
Plato did him, that is, to confute himself. I have run 
through all sorts, yet find no rest in any ; though our 
first studies and junior endeavours may style us peripa- 
teticks, stoicks, or academicks, yet I perceive the wisest 
heads prove at last almost all scepticks, and stand like 
Janus in the field of knowledge. I have therefore one 
common and authentick philosophy I learned in the 
schools, whereby I discourse and satisfy the reason of 
other men ; another more reserved, and drawn from ex- 
perience, whereby I content mine own. Solomon, that 
complained of ignorance in the height of knowledge, 
hath not only humbled my conceits but discouraged my 
endeavours. There is yet another conceit that hath 
sometimes made me shut my books, which tells me it 
is a vanity to waste our days in the blind pursuit of 
knowledge, it is but attending a little longer, and we 
shall enjoy that by instinct and infusion which we endea- 
vour at here by labour and inquisition. It is better to sit 
down in a modest ignorance, and rest contented with 
the natural blessing of our own reasons, than buy the 
uncertain knowledge of this life with sweat and vexation 
which death gives every fool gratis, and is an accessary 
of our glorification. 

IX. I was never yet once, and commend their reso- 
lutions who never marry twice ; not that I disallow of 
second marriage ; as neither in all cases of polygamy, 
which considering some times and the unequal number 
of both sexes, may be also necessary. The whole world 
was made for man, but the twelfth part of man for 
woman ; man is the whole world, and the breath of God ; 
woman the rib and crooked piece of man. I could be 



116 RELIGIO MEDICI. 

content that we might procreate hke trees, without con- 
junction, or that there were any way to perpetuate the 
world without this trivial and vulgar way of coition ; it 
is the foolishest act a wise man commits in all his life, 
nor is there any thing that will more deject his cooled 
imagination, when he shall consider what an odd and 
unworthy piece of folly he hath committed. I speak not 
in prejudice, nor am averse from that sweet sex, but 
naturally amorous of all that is beautiful ; I can look a 
whole day with delight upon a handsome picture, 
though it be but of an horse. It is my temper, and I like 
it the better, to affect all harmony, and sure there is 
musick even in the beauty, and the silent note which 
Cupid strikes, far sweeter than the sound of an instru- 
ment. For there is a musick wherever there is a har- 
mony, order, or proportion ; and thus far we may 
maintain the musick. of the spheres; for those well- 
ordered motions, and regular paces,- though they give no 
sound unto the ear, yet to the understanding they strike 
a note most full of harmony. Whatsoever is harmoni- 
cally composed, delights in harmony ; which makes me 
much distrust the symmetry of those heads which de- 
claim against all church-musick. For myself, not only 
from my obedience, but my particular genius, I do 
embrace it; for even that vulgar and tavern musick, 
which makes one man merry, another mad, strikes in 
me a deep fit of devotion, and a profound contemplation 
of the First Composer : there is something in it of 
divinity more than the ear discovers. It is an hiero- 
glyphical and shadowed lesson of the whole world and 
creatures of God ; such a melody to the ear as the whole 
world, well understood, would afford the understanding. 
In brief, it is a sensible fit of that harmony which intel- 



RELIGIO MEDICI. 



117 



lectually sounds in the ears of God. I will not say with 
Plato, the soul is an harmony, but harmonica!, and hath 
its nearest sympathy unto musick ; thus some whose 
temper of body agrees, and humours the constitution of 
their souls, are born poets, though indeed all are natu- 
rally inclined unto rhythm. This made Tacitus in the 
very first hne of his story, fall upon a verse ;* and 
Cicero, the worst of poets, but declaiming for a poet, 
falls in the very first sentence upon a perfect hexameter.f 
I feel not in me those sordid and unchristian desires of 
my profession ; I do not secretly implore and wish for 
plagues, rejoice at famines, revolve ephemerides and 
almanacks in expectation of malignant aspects, fatal 
conjunctions, and eclipses: I rejoice not at unwholesome 
springs, nor unseasonable winters ; my prayer goes with 
the husbandman's ; I desire every thing in its proper 
season, that neither men nor the times be out of temper. 
Let me be sick myself, if sometimes the malady of my 
patient be not a disease unto me ; I desire rather to cure 
his infirmities than my own necessities ; where I do him 
no good methinks it is scarce honest gain, though I con- 
fess 'tis but the worthy salary of our well-intended en- 
deavours. I am not only ashamed, but heartily sorry, 
that besides death there are diseases incurable ; yet not* 
for my own sake, or that they be beyond my art, but 
for the general cause and sake of humanity, whose 
common cause I apprehend as mine own. And to speak 
more generally, those three noble professions which all 
civil commonwealths do honour, are raised upon the 
fall of Adam and are not exempt from their infirmities : 
there are not only diseases incurable in physick, but 

* Urbem Romam in principio rcges habuere. 

t In qua me non inficior mediocriter esse. — Pro Archio. 



118 RELIGIO MEDICI. 



1 

lltv. ■ 



i 



cases indissolvable in laws, vices incorrigible in divinity. 
If general councils may err, I do not see why particular 
courts should be infallible ; their perfectest rules are 
raised upon the erroneous reasons of man, and the laws 
of one, do but condemn the rules of another; as Aris- 
totle oft-times the opinions of his predecessors, because, 
though agreeable to reason, yet not consonant to his 
own rules, and the logick of his proper principles. 
Again, to speak nothing of the sin against the Holy 
Ghost, whose cure not only but whose nature is un- 
known, I can cure the gout or stone in some, sooner 
than Divinity pride or avarice in others. I can cure 
vices by physick, when they remain incurable by 
divinity, and shall obey my pills, when they contemn 
their precepts. I boast nothing, but plainly say, we all 
labour against our own cure, for death is the cure of all 
diseases. There is no catholicon or universal remedy 
I know but this, which though nauseous to queasy sto- 
machs, yet to prepared appetites is nectar and a plea- 
sant potion of immortaHty. 

X. For my conversation, it is like the sun's, with all 
men; and with a friendly aspect to good and bad. 
Methinks there is no man bad, and the worst, best; 
that is, while they are kept within the circle of those 
qualities wherein they are good : there is no man's 
mind of such discordant and jarring a temper to which 
a tunable disposition may not strike a harmony. Magna! 
virtutes, nee minora vit/'a ; it is the posy of the best 
natures, and may be inverted on the worst ; there are 
in the most depraved and venemous dispositions, certain' 
pieces that remain untoucht, which by an antiperistasis 
become more excellent, or by the excellency of their 
antipathies are able to preserve themselves from the 



1 



RKLIGIO MEDICI. 119 

contagion of their enemy vices, and persist entire be- 
yond the general corruption. For it is also thus in 
natures. The greatest balsams do lie enveloped in the 
bodies of most powerful corrosives ; I say moreover, 
and I ground upon experience, that poisons contain 
within themselves their own antidote, and that which 
preserves them from the venom of themselves ; without 
which they were not deleterious to others only, but to 
themselves also. But it is the corruption that I fear 
within me, not the contagion of commerce without me. 
'Tis that unruly regiment within me that will destroy 
me ; 'tis I that do infect myself, the man without a 
navel yet lives in me : I feel that original canker cor- 
rode and devour me, and therefore Defenda me Dios de 
me, Lord deliver me from myself, is a part of my litany, 
and the first voice of my retired imaginations. There 
is no man alone, because every man is a microcosm, 
and carries the whole world about him ; nunquam 
minus solus quam cum solus, though it be the apoph- 
thegm of a wise man, is yet true in the mouth of a 
fool; for indeed, though in a wilderness, a man is never 
alone, not only because he is with himself and his own 
thoughts, but because he is with the devil, who ever 
consorts with our solitude, and is that unruly rebel that 
musters up those disordered motions which accompany 
our sequestered imaginations. And to speak more 
narrowly, there is no such thing as solitude, nor any 
thing that can be said to be alone and by itself, but 
God, who is his own circle, and can subsist by himself; 
all others, besides their dissimilary and heterogeneous 
parts, which in a manner multiply their natures, cannot 
subsist without the concourse of God and the society of 
that hand which doth uphold their natures. In brief, 



120 RELIGIO MEDICI. 

there can be nothing truly alone and by itself, which is 
not truly one, and such is only God ; all others do 
transcend an unity, and so by consequence are many. 

XL Now for my life, it is a miracle of thirty years, 
which to relate, were not a history but a piece of poetry, 
and would sound to common ears like a fable ; for the 
world, I count it not an inn but an hospital, and a place, 
not to live but to die in. The world that I regard is 
myself, it is the microcosm of my own frame that I 
cast mine eye on ; for the other, I use it but like my 
globe, and turn it round sometimes for my recreation. 
Men that look upon my outside, perusing only my con- 
dition and fortunes, do err in my altitude, for I am 
above Atlas his shoulders. The earth is a point not 
only in respect of the heavens above us, but of that 
heavenly and celestial part within us ; that mass of flesh 
that circumscribes me, limits not my mind ; that surface 
that tells the heavens it hath an end, cannot persuade 
me I have any : I take my circle to be above three 
hundred and sixty ; though the number of the arc do 
measure my body, it comprehendeth not my mind ; 
whilst I study to find how I am a microcosm or little 
world, I find myself something more than the great. 
There is surely a piece of divinity in us, something 
that was before the elements and owes no homage unto 
the sun. Nature tells me I am the image of God, as 
well as Scripture ; he that understands not thus much, 
hath not his introduction or first lesson, and is yet to 
begin the alphabet of man. Let me not injure the feli- 
city of others, if I say I am as happy as any ; Ruat 
codum,fiat voluntas tua, salveth all ; so that whatsoever 
happens, it is but what our daily prayers desire. In 
brief, I am content, and what should Providence add 



1 



RELIGIO MEDICI. 121 

more ? Surely this is it we call happiness, and this do 
I enjoy ; with this I am happy in a dream, and as con- 
tent to enjoy a happiness in a fancy as others in a more 
apparent truth and reality. There is surely a nearer 
apprehension of any thing that delights us in our 
dreams, than in our waked senses ; without this I were 
unhappy, for my awaked judgment discontents me, ever 
whispering unto me that I am from my friend, but my 
friendly dreams in night requite me, and make me 
think I am within his arms. I thank God for my happy 
dreams as I do for my good rest, for there is a satisfac- 
tion in them unto reasonable desires, and such as can 
be content with a fit of happiness ; and surely it is not 
a melancholy conceit to think we are all asleep in this 
world, and that the conceits of this life are as mere 
dreams to those of the next, as the phantasms of the 
night to the conceits of the day. There is an equal 
delusion in both, and the one doth but seem to be the 
emblem or picture of the other; we are somewhat more 
than ourselves in our sleeps, and the slumber of the 
body seems to be but the waking of the soul. It is the 
ligation of sense, but the liberty of reason, and our 
awaking conceptions do not match the fancies of our 
sleeps. At my nativity my ascendant was the watery 
sign of Scorpius ; I was born in the planetary hour of 
Saturn, and I think I have a piece of that leaden planet in 
me. I am no way facetious, nor disposed for the mirth 
and galliardize of company ; yet in one dream I can com- 
pose a whole comedy, behold the action, apprehend the 
jests, and laugh myself awake at the conceits thereof: 
were my memory as faithful as my reason is then 
fruitful, I would never study but in my dreams, and this 
time also would I choose for my devotions; but our 

II 



122 RELIGIO MEDICI. 

grosser memories have then so httle hold of our ab- 
stracted understandings, that they forget the story, and 
can only relate to our awaked souls a confused and 
broken tale of that that hath passed. Aristotle, who 
hath written a singular tract of sleep, hath not methinks 
throughly defined it, nor yet Galen, though he seem to 
have corrected it; for those noctambuloes and night- 
walkers, though in their sleep, do yet enjoy the action 
of their senses : we must therefore say that there is 
something in us that is not in the jurisdiction of Mor- 
pheus, and that those abstracted and ecstatick souls do 
walk about in their own corps, as spirits with the bodies 
they assume ; wherein they seem to hear, see, and feel, 
though indeed the organs are destitute of sense, and 
their natures of those faculties that should inform them. 
Thus it is observed that men sometimes upon the hour 
of their departure, do speak and reason above them- 
selves ; for then the soul beginning to be freed from the 
ligaments of the body, begins to reason like herself, and 
to discourse in a strain above mortality. 

XII. We term sleep a death, and yet it is waking that 
kills us, and destroys those spirits that are the house of 
life. 'Tis indeed a part of life that best expresseth death ; 
for every man truly lives so long as he acts his nature, 
or some way makes good the faculties of himself; Ther«j 
mistocles therefore that slew his soldier in his sleep, was 
a merciful executioner, 'tis a kind of punishment the 
mildness of no laws hath invented ; I wonder the fancy 
of Lucan and Seneca did not discover it. It is that 
death by which we may be literally said to die daily ; 
a death which Adam died before his mortality ; a death 
whereby we live a middle and moderating point between 
life and death ; in fine, so like death I dare not trust it 



RELIGIO MEDICI. 123 

without my prayers, and an half adieu unto the world, 
and take my farewell in a colloquy with God. 

The night is come, like to the day 
Depart not thou great God away I 
Let not my sins, black as the night, 
Eclipse the lustre of thy light ; 
Keep still in my horizon, for to me 
The sun makes not the day, but thee. 
Thou whose nature cannot sleep. 
On my temples sentry keep ; 
Guard me 'gainst those watchful foes. 
Whose eyes are open while mine close ; 
Let no dreams my head infest, 
But such as Jacob's temples blest. 
While I do rest, my soul advance, 
Make my sleep a holy trance. 
That I may, my rest being wrought, 
Awake into some holy thought. 
And with as active vigour run 
My course, as doth the nimble sun. 
Sleep is a death, O make me try. 
By sleeping, what it is to die ; 
And as gently lay my head 
On my grave, as now my bed. 
Howe'er I rest, great God, let me 
Awake again at last with thee : 
And thus assured, behold I lie 
Securely, or to wake or die. 
These are my drowsy days, in vain 
I do now wake to sleep again ; 
O come that hour when I shall never 
Sleep again, but wake for ever I 

This is the dormative I take to bedward, I need no other 
laudanum than this to make me sleep ; after which I 
close mine eyes in security, content to take my leave of 
the sun, and sleep unto the resurrection. 

XIII. The method I should use in distributive justice. 



124 RELIGIO MEDICI. 



1 



I often observe in commutative, and keep a geometrical 
proportion in both ; whereby becoming equable to others, 
I become unjust to myself, and supererogate in that Ij 
common principle, do unto others as thou wouldst be ■ 
done unto thyself I was not born unto riches, neither 
is it I think my star to be wealthy; or if it were, the Ji 
freedom of my mind and frankness of my disposition, ' 
were able to contradict and cross my fates ; for to me 
avarice seems not so much a vice as a deplorable piece 
of madness ; to conceive ourselves urinals, or be per- 
suaded that we are dead, is not so ridiculous, nor so 
many degrees beyond the power of hellebore as this. 
The opinions of theory and positions of men are not so 
void of reason as their practised conclusions ; some have 
held that snow is black, that the earth moves, that the 
soul is air, fire water; but all this is philosophy, and 
there is no delirium, if we do but speculate the folly and 
indisputable dotage of avarice to that subterraneous idol, 
and god of the earth. I do confess I am an atheist, I 
cannot persuade myself to honour that the world adores ; 
whatsoever virtue its prepared substance may have 
within my body, it hath no influence nor operation with- 
out ; I would not entertain a base design, or an action 
that should call me villain, for the Indies ; and for this 
only do I love and honour my own soul, and have me- 
thinks two arms too few to embrace myself Aristotle is 
too severe, that will not allow us to be truly liberal with- 
out wealth, and the bountiful hand of fortune ; if this be 
true, I must confess I am charitable only in my liberal 
intentions, and bountiful well-wishes. But if the exam- 
ple of the mite be not only an act of wonder, but an ex- 
ample of the noblest charity, surely poor men may also 
build hospitals, and the rich alone have not erected 



I 



RELIGIO MEDICI. 125 

cathedrals. I have a private method which others ob- 
serve not ; I take the opportunity of myself to do good, 
I borrow occasion of charity from mine own necessities, 
and supply tiie wants of others when I am in most need 
myself; for it is an honest stratagem to take advantage 
of ourselves, and so to .husband the acts of virtue, that 
where they are defective in one circumstance, they may 
I'epay their want and multiply their goodness in another. 
I have not Peru in my desires, but a competence, and 
ability to perform those good works to which the Al- 
mighty hath inclined my nature. He is rich who hath 
enough to be charitable, and it is hard to be so poor that 
a noble mind may not find a way to this piece of good- 
ness. He that giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord ; 
there is more rhetorick in that one sentence than in a 
library of sermons ; and indeed if those sentences were 
understood by the reader with the same emphasis as 
they are delivered by the author, we needed not those 
volumes of instructions, but might be honest by an epi- 
tome. Upon this motive only I cannot behold a beggar 
without relieving his necessities w^ith my purse, or his 
soul with my prayers ; these scenical and accidental 
differences between us cannot make me forget that 
common and untoucht part of us both ; there is under 
these centoes and miserable outsides, these mutilate and 
semi-bodies, a soul of the same alloy with our own, 
whose genealogy is God as well as ours, and in as fair 
a way to salvation as ourselves. Statists that labour to 
contrive a commonwealth without poverty, take away 
the object of charity, not understanding only the com- 
monweahh of a Christian, but forgetting the prophecy 
of Christ. 

XIV. Now there is another part of charity, which is 
11* 



126 



RELIGIO MEDICI. 



1 



the basis and pillar of this, and that is the love of God, 
for whom we love our neighbour; for this I think charity, 
to love God for himself, and our neighbour for God. 
All that is truly amiable is God, or as it were a divided 
piece of him, that retains a reflex or shadow of himself. 
Nor is it strange that we s^ioiild- place affection on that 
which is invisible ; all that we truly love is thus ; what 
we adore under affection of our senses deserves not the 
honour of so pure a title. Thus we adore virtue, though 
to the eyes of sense she is invisible-; thus that part of 
our noble friends that we love, is not that part that we 
embrace, but that insensible part that our arms cannot 
embrace. God being all goodness, can love nothing 
but himself; he loves us but for that part which is as it 
were himself, and the traduction of his Holy Spirit. 
Let us call to assize the loves of our parents, the affec- 
tion of our wives and children, and they are all dumb 
shows and dreams, without reality, truth, or constancy : 
for first, there is a strong bond of afl^ection between us 
and our parents ; yet how easily dissolved ! We betake 
ourselves to a woman, forget our mother in a wife, and 
the womb that bare us in that that shall bear our image. 
This woman blessing us with children, our affection 
leaves the level it held before, and sinks from our bed 
unto our issue and picture of posterity, where affection 
holds no steady mansion. They, growing up in years, 
desire our ends, or applying themselves to a woman, 
take a lawful way to love another better than ourselves. 
Thus I perceive a man maybe buried alive, and behold 
his grave in his own issue. 

XV. I conclude therefore and say, there is no happi- m^ 
ness under (or as Copernicus will have it, above) the 
sun, nor any crambe in that repeated verity and burthen 



1 



RELIGIO MEDICI. 127 

of all the wisdom of Solomon, all is vanity and vexation 
of spirit ; there is no felicity in that the world adores. 
Aristotle whilst he labours to refute the ideas of Plato, 
falls upon one himself; for his summum bonum is a chi- 
mera, and there is no such thing as his felicity. That 
wherein God himself is happy, the holy angels are 
happy, in whose defect the devils are unhappy, that dare 
I call happiness ; whatsoever conduceth unto this, may 
with an easy metaphor deserve that name ; whatsoever 
else the world terms happiness, is to me a story out of 
Pliny, an apparition or neat delusion, wherein there is 
no more of happiness than the name. Bless me in this 
life with but the peace of my conscience, command of 
my aflections, the love of thyself and my dearest friends, 
and I shall be happy enough to pity Csesar. These are 

Lord the humble desires of my most reasonable am- 
bition, and all I dare call happiness on earth ; wherein 

1 set no rule or limit to thy hand or providence ; dispose 
of me according to the wisdom of thy pleasure. Thy 
will be done, though in my own undoing. 



FINIS. 



c!ll)ri6tian illorab. 



I 



TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE 

DAVID EARL OF BUCHAN, 

VISCOUNT AUCHTERHOUSE, LORD CARDROSS 

AND GLENDOVACHIE.ONE OF THE LORDS COMMISSIONERS OF POLICE, AND LORD 

LIEUTENANT OF THE COUNTIES OF STIRLING AND CLACKMANNAN 

IN NORTH BRITAIN. 

My Lord, 

The honour you have done our family obhgeth us to 
make all just acknowledgments of it ; and there is no 
form of acknowledgment in our power, more worthy of 
your lordship's acceptance, than this dedication of the 
last work of our honoured and learned Father. Encou- 
raged hereunto by the knowledge we have of your lord- 
ship's judicious relish of universal learning, and sublime 
virtue, we beg the favour of your acceptance of it, 
which will very much oblige our family in general, and 
her in particular who is, 

My Lord, 
Your lordship's most humble servant, 

Elizabeth Littleton. 



THE PREFACE. 



If any one, after he has read RELreio medici and thai 
ensuing discourse, can make doubt whether the same J 
person was the author of them both, he may be assured] 
by the testimony of Mrs. Littleton, Sir Thomas 
Browne's daughter, who hved with her father when it 
was composed by him ; and who, at the time, read it'' 
written by his own hand : and also by the testimony of 
others (of whom I am one), who read the manuscript of 
the author immediately after his death, and who have 
since read the same ; from which it hath been faithfully 
and exactly transcribed for the press. The reason why 
it was not printed sooner is, because it was unhappily 
lost, by being mislaid among other manuscripts for 
which search was lately made in the presence of the 
Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, of which his Grace by j 
letter informed Mrs. Littleton when he sent the manu- 
script to her. There is nothing printed in the discourse,] 
or in the short notes, but what is found in the original j 
manuscript of the author, except only where an over- 
sight had made the addition or transposition of so/ne| 
words necessary. 

John Jeffery, 

Archdeacon of Norwich. 



CHRISTIAN MORALS. 



I. Tread softly and circumspectly in this funambu- 
latory track and narrow path of goodness ; pursue virtue 
virtuously ; leaven not good actions, nor render virtues 
disputable. Stain not fair acts with foul intentions ; 
maim not uprightness by halting concomitances, nor 
circumstantially deprave substantial goodness. 

Consider whereabout thou art in Cebes's table, oi 
that old philosophical pinax of the life of man ; whether 
thou art yet in the road of uncertainties ; whether thou 
hast yet entered the narrow gate, got up the hill and 
asperous way, which leadeth unto the house of sanity ; 
or taken that purifying potion from the hand of sincere 
erudition, which may send thee clear and pure away 
unto a virtuous and happy life. 

In this virtuous voyage of thy life hull not about like 
the ark without the use of rudder, mast, or sail, and 
bound for no port. Let not disappointment cause 
despondency, nor difficulty despair. Think not that you 
are sailing from Lima to Manillia, when you may fasten 
up the rudder, and sleep before the wind ; but expect 
rough seas, flaws, and contrary blasts, and 'tis well if by 
many cross tacks and veerings you arrive at the port; 

12 



134 



CHRISTIAN MORALS. 



for we sleep in lions' skins in our progress unto virtue, 
and we slide not, but climb unto it. 

Sit not down in the popular forms and common level* 
of virtues. Offer not only peace-offerings but holocausts 
unto God : where all is due make no reserve, and cut 
not a cummin-seed with the Almighty ; to serve him 
singly to serve ourselves were too partial a piece of 
piety, not like to place us in the illustrious mansions of 
glory. 

II. Rest not in an ovation* but a triumph over thy 
passions. Let anger walk hanging down the head ; let 
malice go manacled, and envy fettered after thee. 
Behold within thee the long train of thy trophies, not 
without thee. Make the quarrelling Lapithytes sleep, 
and Centaurs within lie quiet. Chain up the unruly 
legion of thy breast. Lead thine own captivity captive, 
and be Casar wdthin thyself 

III. He that is chaste and continent, not to impair 
his strength, or honest for fear of contagion, will hardly 
be heroically virtuous. Adjourn not this virtue until _ 
that temper when Cato could lend out his wife, and im-B 
potent satyrs write satires upon lust ; but be chaste in 
thy flaming days, when Alexander dared not trust his 
eyes upon the fair sisters of Darius, and when so many 
think there is no other way but Origen's. 1 

IV. Show thy art in honesty, and lose not thy virtue ■ 
by the bad managery of it. Be temperate and sober, 
not to preserve your body in an ability for wanton 
ends, not to avoid the infamy of common transgressors 
that way, and thereby to hope to expiate or palliate 
obscure or closer vices, not to spare your purse, nor 



* Ovation, a petty find minor kind of triumph. 



1 



CHEISTIAN MORALS. 135 

simply to enjoy health ; but in one word that thereby 
you may truly serve God, which every sickness will tell 
you you cannot well do without health. The sick man's 
sacrifice is but a lame oblation. Pious treasures laid 
up in healthful days plead for sick non-performances ; 
without which we must needs look back with anxiety 
upon the lost opportunities of health, and may have 
cause rather to envy than pity the ends of penitent 
publick sufferers, who go with healthful prayers unto 
the last scene of their lives, and in the integrity of their 
faculties return their spirit unto God that gave it. 

V. Be charitable before wealth make thee covetous, 
and lose not the glory of the mite. If riches increase, 
let thy mind hold pace with them, and think it not 
enough to be liberal, but munificent. Though a cup of 
cold water from some hand may not be without its 
reward, yet stick not thou for wine and oil for the 
wounds of the distressed, and treat the poor as our 
Saviour did the multitude, to the reliques of some 
baskets. Difllise thy beneficence early, and while thy 
treasures call thee master : there may be an Atropos of 
thy fortunes before that of thy life, and thy wealth cut 
off before that hour, when all men shall be poor ; for 
the justice of death looks equally upon the dead, and 
Charon expects no more from Alexander than from 
Irus. 

VI. Give not only unto seven, but also unto eight,* 
that is unto more than many. Though to give unto 
every one that askethf may seem severe advice, yet 
give thou also before asking ; that is, where want is 
silently clamorous, and men's necessities, not their 

* Ecclesiasticus xi. 2. t Luke vi, 30. 



136 



CHRISTIAN MORALS. 



torn 



do loudly call for thy 



mercies. For though 
sometimes necessitousness be dumb, or misery speak 
not out, yet true charity is sagacious, and will find out 
hints for beneficence. Acquaint thyself with the phy- 
siognomy of want, and let the dead colours and first 
lines of necessity suffice to tell thee there is an object 
for thy bounty. Spare not where thou canst not easily 
be prodigal, and fear not to be undone by mercy. For 
since he who hath pity on the poor lendeth unto the 
Almighty re warder, who observes no ides but every 
day for his payments, charity becomes pious usury. 
Christian liberality the most thriving industry, and what 
we adventure in a cockboat may return in a carrack 
unto us. He who thus casts his bread upon the water 
shall surely find it again ; for though it falleth to the 
bottom, it sinks but like the axe of the prophet, to rise 
again unto him. 

VII. If avarice be thy vice, yet make it not thy 
punishment. Miserable men commiserate not them- 
selves, bowelless unto others, and merciless unto their 
own bowels. Let the fruition of things bless the pos- 
session of them, and think it more satisfaction to live 
richly than die rich. For since thy good works, not 
thy goods, will follow thee ; since wealth is an apperte- 
nance of life, and no dead man is rich ; to famish in 
plenty, and live poorly to die rich, were a multiplying 
improvement in madness, and use upon use in folly. 

VIII. Trust not to the omnipotency of gold, and say 
not unto it thou art my confidence. Kiss not thy hand 
to that terrestrial sun, nor bore thy ear unto its servi- 
tude. A slave unto mammon makes no servant unto 
God. Covetousness cracks the sinews of faith; numbs 
the apprehension of any thing above sense, and only 



i 



CHRISTIAN MORALS. 137 

affected with the certainty of things present, makes a 
peradventure of things to come ; Hves but unto one 
world, nor hopes but fears another; makes their own 
death sweet unto others, bitter unto themselves ; brings 
formal sadness, scenical mourning, and no wet eyes at 
the grave. 

IX. Persons lightly dipt, not grained in generous 
honesty, are but pale in goodness, and faint-hued in 
integrity. But be thou what thou virtuously art, and let 
not the ocean wash away thy tincture. Stand mag- 
netically upon that axis, when prudent simplicity hath 
fixt there ; and let no attraction invert the poles of thy 
honesty.. That vice may be uneasy and even monstrous 
unto thee, let iterated good acts and long confirmed 
habits make virtue almost natural, or a second nature 
in thee. Since virtuous superstructions have commonly 
generous foundations, dive into thy inclinations, and early 
discover what nature bids thee to be, or tells thee thou 
mayest be. They who thus timely descend into them- 
selves, and cultivate the good seeds which nature hath 
set in them, prove not shrubs but cedars in their gene- 
ration. And to be in the form of the best of the bad, 
or the worst of the good,* will be no satisfaction unto 
them. 

X. Make not the consequence of virtue the ends 
thereof Be not beneficent for a name or cymbal of 
applause, nor exact and just in commerce for the ad- 
vantages of trust and credit, which attend the reputa- 
tion of true and punctual dealing. For these rewards, 
though unsought for, plain virtue will bring with her. 
To have other by-ends in good actions sours laudable 

* Optimi malorum pessimi bonorum. 
12* 



138 CHRISTIAN MORALS. 

performances, which must have deeper roots, motives, 
and instigations, to give them the stamp of virtues. 

XI. Let not the law of thy country be the non ultra 
of thy honesty ; nor think that always good enough 
which the law will make good. Narrow not the law 
of charity, equity, mercy. Join gospel righteousness 
with legal right. Be not a mere Gamaliel in the faith, 
but let the sermon in the mount be thy targum unto the 
law of Sinai. 

XII. Live by old ethicks and the classical rules of 
honesty. Put no new names or notions upon authentick 
virtues and vices. Think not that morality is ambula- 
tory ; that vices in one age arejiot vices in another; or 
that virtues, which are under the everlasting seal of 
right reason, may be stamped by opinion. And there- 
fore though vicious times invert the opinions of things, 
and set up new ethicks against virtue, yet hold thou 
unto old morality ; and rather than follow a multitude 
to do evil, stand like Pompey's pillar conspicuous by 
thyself, and single in integrity. And since the worst 
of times afford imitable examples of virtue ; since no 
deluge of vice is like to be so general but more than 
eight will escape ; eye well those heroes who have held 
their heads above water, who have touched pitch and 
not been defiled, and in the common contagion have re- 
mained uncorrupted. 

XIII. Let age not envy draw wrinkles on thy cheeks, 
be content to be envied, but envy not. Emulation may 
be plausible and indignation allowable, but admit no 
treaty with that passion which no circumstance can 
make good. A displacency at the good of others be- 
cause they enjoy it, though not unworthy of it, is an 
absurd depravity, sticking fast unto corrupted nature. 



I 



CHRISTIANMORALS. 139 

and often too hard for humility and charity, the great 
suppressors of envy. This surely is a lion not to be 
strangled but by Hercules himself, or the highest stress 
of our minds, and an atom of that power which sub- 
dueth all things unto itself. 

XIV. Owe not thy humility unto humiliation from 
adversity, but look humbly down in that state when 
others look upwards upon thee. Think not thy own 
shadow longer than, that of others, nor delight to take 
the altitude of thyself. Be patient in the age of pride, 
when men live by short intervals of reason under the 
dominion of humour and passion, when it's in the 
power of every one to transform thee out of thyself, 
and run thee into the short madness. If you cannot 
imitate Job, yet come not short of Socrates, and those 
patient pagans who tired the tongues of their enemies, 
while they perceived they spit their malice at brazen 
walls and statues. 

XV. Let not the sun in Capricorn* go down upon 
thy wrath, but write thy wrongs in ashes. Draw the 
curtain of night upon injuries, shut them up in the tower 
of oblivion,! ^^^ 1®^ them be as though they had not 
been. To forgive our enemies, yet hope that God will 
punish them, is not to forgive enough. To forgive 
them ourselves, and not to pray God to forgive them, 
is a partial piece of charity. Forgive thine enemies 
totally, and without any reserve, that however, God 
will revenge thee. 

* Even v/hen the days are shortest. 

t Alluding unto the tower of oblivion mentioned by Procopius, which 
was the name of a tower of imprisonment among tiie Persians : who- 
ever was put therein was as it were buried alive, and it was death for 
any but to name him. 



140 



CHRISTIAN MORALS. 



XVI. While thou so hotly disclaimest the devil, be 
not guilty of diabolism. Fall not into one name with 
that unclean spirit, nor act his nature whom thou so 
much abhorrest ; that is, to accuse, calumniate, back- 
bite, whisper, detract, or sinistrously interpret others. 
Degenerous depravities, and narrow-minded vices ! not 
only below St. Paul's noble Christian but Aristotle's 
true gentleman.* Trust not with some that the epistle 
of St. James is apocryphal, and so read with less fear 
that stabbing truth, that in company with this vice thy 
religion is in vain. Moses broke the tables, without 
breaking of the law ; but where charity is broke, the 
law itself is shattered, which cannot be whole without 
love, which is the fulfilling of it. Look humbly upon 
thy virtues ; and though thou art rich in some, yet 
think thyself poor and naked without that crowning 
grace, which thinketh no evil, wiiich envieth not, which 
beareth, hopeth, believeth, endureth all things. With 
these sure graces, while busy tongues are crying out 
for a drop of cold water, mutes may be in happiness, 
and sing the Trisagionf in heaven. 

XVII. However thy understanding may waver in 
the theories of true and false, yet fasten the rudder of 
thy will, steer straight unto good and fall not foul on 
evil. Imagination is apt to rove, and conjecture to 
keep no bounds. Some have run out so far, as to fancy 
the stars might be but the light of the crystalline heaven 
shot through perforations on the bodies of the orbs. 
Others more ingeniously doubt whether there hath not 
been a vast tract of land in the Atlantick ocean, which 
earthquakes and violent causes have long ago devoured. 

* See Aristotle's Ethics, chapter of Magnanimity, 
t Holy, holy, lioly. 



CHRISTIAN MORALS. 141 

Speculative misapprehensions may be innocuous, but 
immorality pernicious ; theorical mistakes and physical 
deviations may condemn our judgments, not lead us 
into judgment. But perversity of will, immoral and 
sinful enormities walk with Adraste and Nemesis at 
their backs, pursue us unto judgment, and leave us 
viciously miserable. 

XVIir. Bid early defiance unto those vices which 
are of thine inward family, and having a root in thy 
temper plead a right and propriety in thee. Raise 
timely batteries against those strong holds built upon 
the rock of nature, and make this a great part of the 
militia of thy life. Delude not thyself into iniquities 
from participation or community, which abate the 
sense but not the obliquity of them. To conceive sins 
less, or less of sins, because others also transgress, 
were morally to commit that natural fallacy of man, to 
take comfort from society, and think adversities less 
because others also suffer them. The politick nature 
of vice must be opposed by policy; and therefore wiser 
honesties project and plot against it. Wherein not- 
withstanding we are not to rest in generals, or the trite 
stratagems of art. That may succeed with one which 
may prove successless with another. There is no com- 
munity or commonweal of virtue ; every man must 
study his own economy, and adapt such rules unto the 
figure of himself 

XIX. Be substantially great in thyself, and more 
than thou appearest unto others ; and let the world be 
deceived in thee, as they are in the lights of heaven. 
Hang early plummets upon the heels of pride, and let 
ambition have but an epicycle and narrow circuit in 
thee. Measure not thyself by thy morning shadow, but 



142 



CHRISTIAN MORALS. 



by the extent of thy grave, and reckon thyself above 
the earth by the Hne thou must be contented with under 
it. Spread not into boundless expansions either of de- 
signs or desires. Think not that mankind hveth but! 
for a few, and that the rest are born but to serve those 
ambitions which make but flies of men, and wilder- 
nesses of whole nations. Swell not into vehement 
actions which embroil and confound the earth ; but be 
one of those violent ones which force the kingdom of 
heaven.* If thou must needs rule, be Zeno's king, and 
enjoy that empire which every man gives himself He 
who is thus his own monarch contentedly sways the 
sceptre of himself, not envying the glory of crowned 
heads and Elohims of the earth. Could the world unite 
in the practice of that despised train of virtues which 
the divine ethicks of our Saviour hath so inculcated unto 
us, the furious face of things must disappear; Eden 
would be yet to be found, and the angels might look 
down, not with pity, but joy upon us. 

XX. Though the quickness of thine ear were able to 
reach the noise of the moon, which some think it maketh 
in its rapid revolution ; though the number of thy ears 
should equal Argus his eyes ; yet stop them all with 
the wise man's w^ax, and be deaf unto the suggestions 
of tale-bearers, calumniators, pickthank or malevolent 
delators, who, while quiet men sleep, sowing the tares 
of discord and division distract the tranquillity of cha- 
rity and all friendly society. These are the tongues i 
that set the world on fire, cankers of reputation, and,.j 
like that of Jonas his gourd, wither a good name in ai 
night. Evil spirits may sit still, while these spirits walk] 



* Matthew xi. 



CHRISTIAN MORALS. 143 

about and perform the business of hell. To speak more 
strictly, our corrupted hearts are the factories of the 
devil, which may be at work without his presence. 
For when that circumventing spirit hath drawn malice, 
envy, and all unrighteousness, unto well-rooted habits 
in his disciples, iniquity then goes on upon its own legs, 
and if the gate of hell were shut up for a time, vice 
would still be fertile and produce the fruits of hell. 
Thus when God forsakes us, Satan also leaves us ; for 
such offenders he looks upon as sure and sealed up, and 
his temptations then needless unto them. 

XXI. Annihilate not the mercies of God by the ob- 
livion of ingratitude. For oblivion is a kind of annihi- 
lation, and for things to be as though they had not been, 
is like unto never being. Make not thy head a grave, but 
a repository of God's mercies. Though thou hadst the 
memory of Seneca, or Simonides, and conscience, the 
punctual memorist within us, yet trust not to thy re- 
membrance in things which need phylacteries. Register 
not only strange, but merciful occurrences ; let ephe- 
merides not olympiads give thee account of his mercies. 
Let thy diaries stand thick with dutiful mementoes and 
asterisks of acknowledgment. And to be complete and 
forget nothing, date not his mercy from thy nativity ; 
look beyond the world, and before the era of Adam. 

XXII. Paint not the sepulchre of thyself, and strive 
not to beautify thy corruption. Be not an advocate for 
thy vices, nor call for many hour-glasses to justify thy 
imperfections. Think not that always good which thou 
thinkest thou canst always make good, nor that concealed 
which the sun doth not behold. That which the sun doth 
not now see, will be visible when the sun is out and the 
stars are fallen from heaven. Meanwhile there is no dark- 



144 CHRISTIAN MORALS. 

ness unto conscience, which can see without light, and 
in the deepest obscurity give a clear draught of things 
which the cloud of dissimulation hath concealed from 
all eyes. There is a natural standing court within us, 
examining, acquitting, and condemning at the tribunal 
of ourselves, wherein iniquities have their natural thetas, 
and no nocent is absolved by the verdict of himself 
And therefore although our transgressions shall be tried 
at the last bar, the process need not be long ; for the 
Judge of all knoweth all, and every man will nakedly 
know himself. And when so few are like to plead not 
guilty, the assize must soon have an end. 

XXIII. Comply with some humours, bear with others, 
but serve none. Civil complacency consists with decent 
honesty ; flattery is a juggler, and no kin unto sincerity. 
But while thou maintainest the plain path, and scornest 
to flatter others, fall not into self-adulation, and become 
not thine own parasite. Be deaf unto thyself, and be 
not betrayed at home. Self-credulity, pride, and levity 
lead unto self-idolatry. There is no Damocles like unto 
self-opinion, nor any Siren to our own fawning concep- 
tions. To magnify our minor things, or hug ourselves 
in our apparitions ; to affbrd a credulous ear unto the 
clawing suggestions of fancy ; to pass our days in painted 
mistakes of ourselves ; and though we behold our own 
blood, to think ourselves the sons of Jupiter,* are bland- 
ishments of self-love worse than outward delusion. By 
this imposture wise men sometimes are mistaken in their 
elevation, and look above themselves. And fools, which 
are antipodes unto the wise, conceive themselves to be 
but their perioeci, and in the same parallel with them. 

• As Alexander the Great did. 



CHRISTIAN MORALS. 145 

XXIV. Be not a Hercules furens abroad, and a pol- 
tron within thyself. To chase our enemies out of the 
field, and be led captive by our vices ; to beat down our 
foes, and fall down to our concupiscences ; are solecisms 
in moral schools, and no laurel attends them. To well 
manage our affections, and wild horses of Plato, are the 
highest Circenses ; and the noblest digladiation is in the 
theatre of ourselves ; for therein our inward antagonists, 
not only like common gladiators, with ordinary weapons 
and downright blows make at us, but also like retiary 
and laqueary combatants, with nets, frauds, and en- 
tanglements, fall upon us. Weapons for such combats 
are not to be forged at Lipara ; Vulcan's art doth no- 
thing in this internal militia ; wherein not the armour 
of Achilles, but the armature of St. Paul, gives the glo- 
rious day, and triumphs not leading up into capitols, 
but up into the highest heavens. And therefore while 
so many think it the only valour to command and master 
others, study thou the dominion of thyself, and quiet 
thine own commotions. Let right reason be thy Lycur- 
gus, and lift up thy hand unto the law of it ; move by 
the intelligences of the superiour faculties, not by the 
rapt of passion, nor merely by that of temper and con- 
stitution. They who are merely carried on by the 
wheel of such inclinations, without the hand and gui- 
dance of sovereign reason, are but the automatons part 
of mankind, rather lived than Hving, or at least under- 
living themselves. 

XXV. Let not fortune, which hath no name in 
Scripture, have any in thy divinity. Let Providence, 
not chance, have the honour of thy acknowledgments, 
and be thy QEdipus in contingencies. Mark well the 
paths and winding ways thereof; but be not too wise in 

13 



146 CHRISTIAN MORALS. 

the construction, or sadden in the appHcation. The hand 
of Providence writes often by abbreviatures, hierogly- 
phicks, or short characters, which, Hke the laconism on 
the wall, are not to be made out but by a hint or key 
from that Spirit which indited them. Leave future 
occurrences to their uncertainties, think that which is 
present thy own; and since 'tis easier to foretel an 
eclipse, than a foul day at some distance, look for little 
regular below. Attend with patience the uncertainty of 
things, and what lieth yet unexerted in the chaos of 
futurity. The uncertainty and ignorance of things to 
come makes the world new unto us by unexpected 
emergencies ; whereby we pass not our days in the trite 
road of affairs affording no novity ; for the novellizing 
spirit of man lives by variety, and the new faces of 
things, 

XXVI. Though a contented mind enlargeth the 
dimension of little things, and unto some 'tis wealth 
enough not to be poor, and others are well content, if 
they be but rich enough to be honest, and to give every 
man his due ; yet fall not into that obsolete affectation 
of bravery to throw away thy money, and to reject all 
honours or honourable stations in this courtly and splen- 
did world. Old generosity is superannuated, and such 
contempt of the world out of date. No man is now like 
to refuse the favour of great ones, or be content to say 
unto princes, stand out of my sun. And if any there be 
of such antiquated resolutions, they are not like to be 
tempted out of them by great ones ; and 'tis fair if they 
escape the name of hypochondriacks from the genius of 
latter times, unto whom contempt of the world is the 
most contemptible opinion, and to be able, like Bias, to 
carry all they have about them were to be the eighth 



I 



CHRISTIAN MORALS. 147 

wise man. However, the old tetrick philosophers 
looked always with indignation upon such a face of 
things, and observing the unnatural current of riches, 
power, and honour in the world, and withal the imper- 
fection and demerit of persons often advanced unto 
them, were tempted unto angry opinions, that affairs 
wereordei'ed more by stars than reason, and that things 
went on rather by lottery than election. 

XXVII. If thy vessel be but small in the ocean of 
this world, if meanness of possessions be th}^ allotment 
upon earth, forgot not those virtues which the great 
Disposer of all bids thee to entertain from thy quality 
and condition, that is, submission, humility, content of 
mind, and industry. Content may dvv^ell in all stations. 
To be low, but above contempt, may be high enough to 
be happy. But many of low degree may be higher than 
computed, and some cubits above the common commen- 
suration ; for in all states virtue gives qualifications, and 
allowances, which make out defects. Rough diamonds 
are sometimes mistaken for pebbles, and meanness may 
be rich in accomplishments which riches in vain desire. 
If our merits be above our stations, if our intrinsecal 
value be greater than what we go for, or our value than 
our valuation, and if we stand higher in God's, than in 
the censor's book ; it may make some equitable balance 
in the inequalities of this world, and there may be no 
such vast chasm or gulph between disparities as 
common measures determine. The divine eye looks 
upon high and low differently from that of man. They 
who seem to stand upon Olympus, and high mounted 
unto our eyes, may be but in the valleys, and low- 
ground unto his ; for he looks upon those as highest who 
nearest approach his divinity, and upon those as lowest 
who are farthest from it. 



148 



CHRISTIAN MORALS. 



XXVIII. When thou lookest upon the imperfections 
of others, allow one eye for what is laudable in them, and 
the balance they have from some excellency, which may 
render them considerable. While we look with fear or 
hatred upon the teeth of the viper, we may behold his 
eye with love. In venemous natures something may 
be amiable : poisons afford antipoisons ; nothing is 
totally, or altogether uselessly bad. Notable virtues are 
sometimes dashed with notorious vices, and in some 
vicious tempers have been found illustrious acts of vir- 
tue ; which makes such observable worth in some 
actions of king Demetrius, Antonius, and Ahab, as are 
not to be found in the same kind in Aristides, Numa, or 
David. Constancy, generosity, clemency, and liberality, 
have been highly conspicuous in some persons not 
markt out in other concerns for example or imitation. 
But since goodness is exemplary in all, if others have 
not our virtues, let us not be wanting in theirs, nor 
scorning them for their vices whereof we are free, be 
condemned by their virtues wherein we are deficient. 
There is dross, alloy, and embasement, in all human 
tempers, and he flieth without wings, who thinks to find 
ophir or pure metal in any. For perfection is not, like 
light, centered in any one body, but like the dispersed 
seminalities of vegetables at the creation, scattered 
through the whole mass of the earth, no place producing 
all, and almost all some. So that 'tis well, if a perfect 
man can be made out of many men, and to the perfect 
eye of God even out of mankind. Time, which perfects 
some things, imperfects also others. Could we intimately 
apprehend the ideated man, and as he stood in the 
intellect of God upon the first exertion by creation, we 
might more narrowly comprehend our present degene- 



CHRISTIAN MORAL S. 149 

ration, and how widely we are fallen from the pure 
exemplar and idea of our nature : for after this corrup- 
tive elongation from a primitive and pure creation, we 
are almost lost in degeneration ; and Adam hath not 
only fallen from his Creator, but we ourselves from 
Adam, our Tycho and primary generator. 

XXIX. Quarrel not rashly with adversities not yet 
understood ; and overlook not the mercies often bound 
up in them. For we consider not sufficiently the good 
of evils, nor fairly compute the mercies of Providence 
in things afflictive at first hand. The famous Andreas 
Doria being invited to a feast by Aloysio Fieschi with 
design to kill him, just the night before fell mercifully 
into a fit of the gout, and so escaped that mischief. 
When Cato intended to kill himself, from a blow which 
he gave his servant who would not reach his sword 
unto him, his hand so swelled that he had much ado to 
effect his design. Hereby any one but a resolved stoick 
might have taken a fair hint of consideration, and that 
some merciful genius would have contrived his preser- 
vation. To be sagacious in such intercurrences is not 
superstition, but wary and pious discretion, and to con- 
temn such hints were to be deaf unto the speaking hand 
of God, wherein Socrates and Cardan would hardly 
have been mistaken. 

XXX. Break not open the gate of destruction, and 
make no haste or bustle unto ruin. Post not heedlessly 
on unto the non ultra of folly, or precipice of perdition. 
Let vicious ways have their tropicks and deflexions ; 
and swim in the waters of sin but as in the Asphaltick 
lake, though smeared and defiled, not to sink to the 
bottom. If thou hast dipt thy foot in the brink, yet 
venture not over Rubicon. Run not into extremities 

13* 



150 CHRISTIAN MORALS. 

from whence there is no regression. In the vicious 
ways of the world it mercifully falleth out that we be- 
come not extempore wicked, but it taketh some time 
and pains to undo ourselves. We fall not from virtue, 
like Vulcan from heaven, in a day. Bad dispositions 
require some time to grow into bad habits, bad habits 
must undermine good, and often repeated acts make us 
habitually evil; so that by gradual depravations, and 
while we are but staggeringly evil, we are not left 
without parentheses of consideration, thoughtful re- 
bukes, and merciful interventions, to recal us unto our- 
selves. For the wisdom of God hath methodized the 
course of things unto the best advantage of goodness, 
and thinking considerators overlook not the tract 
thereof. 

XXXI. Since men and women have their proper 
virtues and vices, and even twins of different sexes 
have not only distinct coverings in the womb, but differ- 
ing qualities and virtuous habits after ; transplace not 
their proprieties and confound not their distinctions. 
Let masculine and feminine accomplishments shine in 
their proper orbs, and adorn their respective subjects. 
However unite not the vices of both sexes in one ; be 
not monstrous in iniquity, nor hermaphroditically 
vicious. 

XXXII. If generous honesty, valour, and plain 
dealing, be the cognizance of thy family, or character- 
istick of thy country, hold fast such inclinations suckt in 
with thy first breath, and which lay in the cradle with 
thee. Fall not into transforming degenerations, which 
under the old name create a new nation. Be not an alien 
in thine own nation ; bring not Orontes into Tiber ; learn 
the virtues not the vices of thy foreign neighbours, and 



n 



CHRISTIAN MORALS. 151 

make thy imitation by discretion not contagion. Feel 
something of thyself in the noble acts of thy ancestors, 
and find in thine own genius that of thy predecessors. 
Rest not under the expired methods of others, shine by 
those of thy own. Flame not like the central fire which 
enlighteneth no eyes, which no man seeth, and most 
men think there's no such thing to be seen. Add one 
ray unto the common lustre ; add not only to the 
number but the note of thy generation ; and prove not 
a cloud but an asterisk in thy region, 

XXXIII. Since thou hast an alarum in thy breast, 
which tells thee thou hast a living spirit in thee above 
two thousand times in an hour; dull not away thy days 
in slothful supinity and the tediousness of doing nothing. 
To strenuous minds there is an inquietude in overquiet- 
ness, and no laboriousness in labour; and to tread a 
mile after the slow pace of a snail, or the heavy mea- 
sures of the lazy of Brazilia, were a most tiring penance, 
and worse than a race of some furlongs at the Olym- 
picks. The rapid courses of the heavenly bodies are 
rather imitable by our thoughts, than our corporeal 
motions ; yet the solemn motions of our lives amount 
unto a greater measure than is commonly apprehended. 
Some few men have surrounded the globe of the earth ; 
yet many in the set locomotions and movements of their 
days have measured the circuit of it, and twenty thou- 
sand miles have been exceeded by them. Move cir- 
cumspectly not meticulously, and rather carefully 
solicitous than anxiously solicitudinous. Think not 
there is a lion in the way, nor walk with leaden sandals 
in the paths of goodness ; but in all virtuous motions let 
prudence determine thy measures. Strive not to run 
like Hercules, a furlong in a breath ; festination may 



152 



CHRISTIAN MORALS. 



prove precipitation; deliberating delay may be wise 
cunctation, and slowness no slothfulness. 

XXXIV. Since virtuous actions have their own 
trumpets, and without any noise from thyself will have 
their resound abroad, busy not thy best member in the 
encomium of thyself Praise is a debt we owe unto the 
virtues of others, and due unto our own from all, whom 
malice hath not made mutes, or envy struck dumb. Fall 
not however into the common prevaricating way of 
self-commendation and boasting, by denoting the imper- 
fections of others. He who discommendeth others, 
obliquely commendeth himself He who whispers their 
infirmities proclaims his own exemption from them, and 
consequently says, I am not as this publican, or hie 
niger, whom I talk of Open ostentation and loud vain- 
glory is more tolerable than this obliquity, as but con- 
taining some froth, no ink; as but consisting of a 
personal piece of folly, nor complicated with unchari- 
tableness. Superfluously we seek a precarious applause 
abroad ; every good man hath his plaudite within him- 
self, and though his tongue be silent is not without loud ■ 
cymbals in his breast. Conscience will become his 
panegyrist, and never forget to crown and extol him 
unto himself 

XXXV. Bless not thyself only that thou wert born 
in Athens ;* but among thy multiplied acknowledgments 
lift up one hand unto heaven that thou wert born of 
honest parents, that modesty, humility, patience, and 
veracity, lay in the same egg, and came into the world 
with thee. From such foundations thou may'st be 
happy in a virtuous precocity, and make an early and 

* As Socrates did. Athens a place of learning and civility. 



I 



CHRISTIAN MORALS. 153 

long walk in goodness ; so may'st thou more naturally 
feel the contrariety of vice unto nature, and resist some 
by the antidote of thy temper. As charity covers, so 
modesty preventeth a multitude of sins ; withholding 
from noonday vices and brazen-browed iniquities, from 
sinning on the house-top, and painting our follies with 
the rays of the sun. Where this virtue reigneth, though 
vice may show its head it cannot be in its glory : where 
shame of sin sets, look not for virtue to arise ; for when 
modesty taketh wing Astraea goes soon after.* 

XXXVI. The heroical vein of mankind runs much 
in the soldiery, and courageous part of the world ; and 
in that form we oftenest find men above men. History- 
is full of the gallantry of that tribe ; and when we read 
their notable acts, we easily find what a difference there 
is between a life in Plutarch and in Laertius. Where 
true fortitude dwells, loyalty, bounty, friendship, and 
fidelity, may be found. A man may confide in persons 
constituted for noble ends, who dare do and suffer, and 
who have a hand to burn for their country and their 
friend. Small and creeping things are the product of 
petty souls. He is like to be mistaken, who makes 
choice of a covetous man for a friend, or relieth upon 
the reed of narrow and poltron friendship. Pitiful things 
are only to be found in the cottages of such breasts ; 
but bright thoughts, clear deeds, constancy, fidelity, 
bounty, and generous honesty, are the gems of noble 
minds ; wherein, to derogate from none, the true heroick 
English gentleman hath no peer. 

* Astreea goddess of justice, and consequently of all virtue. 



THE SECOND PART. 



I. Punish not thyself with pleasure ; glut not thy 
sense with palative delights ; nor revenge the contempt 
of temperance by the penalty of satiety. Were there 
an age of delight or any pleasure durable, who would 
not honour Volupia? but the race of delight is short, 
and pleasures have mutable faces. The pleasures of 
one age are not pleasures in another, and their lives fall 
short of our own. Even in our sensual days the strength 
of delight is in its seldomness or rarity, and sting in its 
satiety ; modiocrity is its life, and immoderacy its con- 
fusion. The luxurious emperours of old inconsider- 
ately satiated themselves with the dainties of sea and 
land, till, wearied through all varieties, their refections 
became a study unto them, and they were fain to feed 
by invention. Novices in true Epicurism ! which by 
mediocrity, paucity, quick and healthful appetite, makes 
delights smartly acceptable ; whereby Epicurus himself 
found Jupiter's brain* in a piece Cytheridian cheese, 
and the tongues of nightingales in a dish of onions.B 
Hereby healthful and temperate poverty hath the start 
of nauseating luxury ; unto whose clear and naked ap- 
petite every meal is a feast, and in one single dish the] 



* Cerebrum Jovis, for a delicious bit. 



CHRISTIAN MORALS. 155 

first course of Metellas ;* "who are cheaply hungry, and 
never lose their hunger, or advantage of a craving ap- 
petite, because obvious food contents it; while Nerof 
half famished could not feed upon a piece of bread, and 
lingering after his snowed water, hardly got down an 
ordinary cup of Calda.J By such circumspections of 
pleasure the contemned philosophers reserved unto 
themselves the secret of delight, which the helluos of 
those days lost in their exorbitances. In vain we study 
delight: it is at the command of every sober mind, and in 
every sense born with us ; but nature, who teacheth us 
the rule of pleasure, instructeth also in the bounds there- 
of, and where its line expireth. And therefore tempe- 
rate minds, not pressing their pleasures until the sting 
appeareth, enjoy their contentations contentedly and 
without regret, and so escape the folly of excess, to be 
pleased unto displacency. 

II. Bring candid eyes unto the perusal of men's 
works, and let not Zoilism or detraction blast well-in- 
tended labours. He that endureth no faults in men's 
writings must only read his own, wherein for the most 
part all appeareth white. Quotation mistakes, inadver- 
tency, expedition, and human lapses, may make not 
only moles but warts in learned authors, who notwith- 
standing being judged by the capital matter admit not 
of disparagement. I should unwillingly affirm that Ci- 
cero was but slightly versed in Homer, because in his 
work de Gloria, he ascribed those verses unto Ajax 
which were delivered by Hector. What if Plautus in 

* Metellus his riotous pontificial supper, the great variety whereat is 
to be seen in Macrobius. 

t Nero in his flight. — Sueton. 
t Caldae gelidaBque minister. 



156 



CHRISTIAN MORALS. 



the account of Hercules mistaketh nativity for concep- 
tion ? Who would have mean thoughts of Apollinaris 
Sidonius, vv^ho seems to mistake the river Tigris for 
Euphrates ? and though a good historian and learned 
bishop of Auvergne had the misfortune to be out in the 
story of David, making mention of him when the ark 
was sent back by the PhiUstines upon a cart; which 
was before his time. Though I have no great opinion 
of Machiavel's learning, yet I shall not presently say, 
that he was but a novice in Roman history, because he 
was mistaken in placing Commodus after the emperour 
Severus. Capital truths are to be narrowly eyed, col- 
lateral lapses and circumstantial deliveries not to be too 
strictly sifted. And if the substantial subject be well 
forged out, we need not examine the sparks which irre- 
gularly fly from it. 

III. Let well-weighed considerations, not stiff and 
peremptory assumptions, guide thy discourses, pen, and 
actions. To begin or continue our works like Trisme- 
gistus of old,* verum certe verum atque verissimum est, 
would sound arrogantly unto present ears in this strict 
inquiring age, wherein for the most part, probably, and 
perhaps, will hardly serve to mollify the spirit of cap- 
tious contradictors. If Cardan saith that a parrot is 
a beautiful bird, Scaliger will set his wits o'work to 
prove it a deformed animal. The compage of all phy- 
sical truths is not so closely jointed, but opposition may 
find intrusion; nor always so closely maintained, as 
not to suffer attrition. Many positions seem quodlibeti- 
cally constituted, and like a Delphian blade will cut on 
both sides. Some truths seem almost falsehoods, and 



• In Tabula Smaragdina. 



CHRISTIAN MORALS. 157 

some falsehoods almost truths ; wherein falsehood and 
truth seem almost equilibriously stated, and but a few 
grains of distinction to bear down the balance. Some 
have digged deep, yet glanced by the royal vein ; and 
a man may come unto the pericardium, but not the 
heart of truth. Besides, many things are known, as 
some are seen, that is by parallaxis, or at some distance 
from their true and proper beings, the superficial regard 
of things having a different aspect from their true and 
central natures. And this moves sober pens unto sus- 
pensory and timorous assertions, nor presently to ob- 
trude them as Sibyl's leaves, which after-considerations 
may find to be but folious appearances, and not the 
central and vital interiours of truth. 

IV. Value the judicious, and let not mere acquests in 
minor parts of learning gain thy pre-existimation. 'Tis 
an unjust way of compute to magnify a weak head for 
some Latin abilities, and to undervalue a solid judg- 
ment, because he knows not the genealogy of Hector. 
When that notable king of France* would have his son 
to know but one sentence in Latin, had it been a good 
one perhaps it had been enough. Natural parts and 
good judgments rule the world. States are not governed 
by ergotisms. Many have ruled well who could not, 
perhaps, define a commonwealth, and they who under- 
stand not the globe of the earth command a great 
part of it. Where natural logick prevails not, artificial 
too often faileth. Where nature fills the sails, the 
vessel goes smoothly on, and when judgment is the 
pilot, the ensurance need not be high. When industry 
builds upon nature, we may expect pyramids; where 

* Lewis the Eleventh. Qui nescit dissimulare nescit regnare. 
14 



158 CHRISTIAN MORALS. 

that foundation is wanting, the structure must be low. 
They do most by books, who could do much without 
them, and he that chiefly owes himself unto himself, is 
the substantial man. 

V. Let thy studies be free as thy thoughts and con- 
templations, but fly not only upon the wings of imagina- 
tion ; join sense unto reason, and experiment unto specu- 
lation, and so give life unto embryon truths, and verities 
yet in their chaos. There is nothing more acceptable 
unto the ingenious world, than this noble eluctation of 
truth; wherein, against the tenacity of prejudice and 
prescription, this century now prevaileth. What libra- 
ries of new volumes after-times will behold, and in 
what a new world of knowledge the eyes of our pos- 
terity may be happy, a few ages may joyfully declare ; 
and is but a cold thought unto those, who cannot hope 
to behold this exantlation of truth, or that obscured 
virgin half out of the pit. Which might make some 
content with a commutation of the time of their lives, 
and to commend the fancy of the Pythagorean metemp- 
suchosis ; whereby they might hope to enjoy this hap- 
piness in their third or fourth selves, and behold that in 
Pythagoras, which they now but foresee in Euphorbus.* 
The world, which took but six days to make, is like to 
take six thousand to make out : meanwhile old truths 
voted down begin to resume their places, and new ones 
arise upon us ; wherein there is no comfort in the hap- 
piness of TuUy's Elysium,t or any satisfaction from the 
ghosts of the ancients, who knew so little of what is 

• Ipse ego, nam memini, Trojani tempore belli 
Panthoides Euphorbus eram. — Ovid. 
t Who comforted himself that he should there converse with the old 
philosophers. 



I 



CHRISTIAN MORALS. 150 

now well known. Men disparage not antiquity who 
prudently exalt new inquiries, and make not them the 
judges of truth, who were but fellow inquirers of it. 
Who can but magnify the endeavours of Aristotle, and 
the noble start which learning had under him ; or less 
than pity the slender progression made upon such 
advantages 1 while many centuries were lost in repeti- 
tions and transcriptions sealing up the book of know- 
ledge. And therefore rather than to swell the leaves of 
learning by fruitless repetitions, to sing the same song 
in all ages, nor adventure at essays beyond the attempt 
of others, many would be content that some would 
write like Helmont or Paracelsus ; and be willing to 
endure the monstrosity of some opinions, for divers 
singular notions requiting such aberrations. 

VI. Despise not the obliquities of younger ways, nor 
despair of better things whereof there is yet no pros- 
pect. Who would imagine that Diogenes, who in his 
younger days was a falsifier of money, should in the 
after-course of his life be so great a contemner of 
metal ? Some negroes, who believe the resurrection, 
think that they shall rise white.* Even in this life re- 
generation may imitate resurrection, our black and 
vicious tinctures may wear off, and goodness clothe us 
with candour. Good admonitions knock not always in 
vain. There will be signal examples of God's mercy, 
and the angels must not want their charitable rejoices 
for the conversion of lost sinners. Figures of most 
angles do nearest approach unto circles, which have no 
angles at all. Some may be near unto goodness, who 
are conceived far from it, and hi any things happen, not 

* Mandelslo. 



160 



CHRISTIAN MORALS. 



likely to ensue from any promises of antecedencies. 
Culpable beginnings have found commendable conclu- 
sions, and infamous courses pious retractions. Detes- 
table sinners have proved exemplary converts on earth, 
and may be glorious in the apartment of Mary Mag- 
dalene in heaven. Men are not the same through all 
divisions of their ages. Time, experience, self-reflec- 
tions, and God's mercies, make in some well-tempered 
minds a kind of translation before death, and men to 
differ from themselves as well as from other persons. 
Hereof the old world afforded many examples, to the 
infamy of latter ages, wherein men too often live by 
the rule of their inclinations ; so that, without any 
astral prediction, the first day gives the last.* Men 
are commonly as they were, or rather, as bad disposi- 
tions run into worser habits, the evening doth not 
crown, but sourly conclude the day. 

VII. If the Almighty will not spare us according to 
his merciful capitulation at Sodom ; if his goodness 
please not to pass over a great deal of bad for a small 
pittance of good, or to look upon us in the lump ; there 
is slender hope for mercy, or sound presumption of ful- 
filhng half his will, either in persons or nations ; they 
who excel in some virtues being so often defective in 
others ; few men driving at the extent and amplitude of 
goodness, but computing themselves by their best parts, 
and others by their worst, are content to rest in those 
virtues which others commonly want. Which makes 
this speckled face of honesty in the world ; and which 
was the imperfection of the old philosophers and great 
pretenders unto virtue, who well declining the gaping 



* Primusque dies dedjt extremuin. 



CHRISTIAN MORALS. 161 

vices of intemperance, incontinency, violence, and 
oppression, were yet blindly peccant in iniquities of 
closer faces; were envious, malicious, contemners, 
scoffers, censurers, and stufft with vizard vices, no less 
depraving the ethereal particle and diviner portion of 
man. For envy, malice, hatred, are the quahties of 
Satan, close and dark like himself; and where such 
brands smoke, the soul cannot be white. Vice may be 
had at all prices ; expensive and costly iniquities, which 
make the noise, cannot be every man's sins : but the soul 
may be foully inquinated at a very low rate, and a man 
may be cheaply vicious, to the perdition of himself 

VIII. Opinion rides upon the neck of reason, and men 
are happy, wise, or learned, according as that empress 
shall set them down in the register of reputation. How- 
ever weigh not thyself in the scales of thy own opinion, 
but let the judgment of the judicious be the standard of 
thy merit. Self-estimation is a flatterer too readily 
intitling us unto knowledge and abilities, which others 
solicitously labour after, and doubtfully think they 
attain. Surely such confident tempers do pass their 
days in best tranquillity, who, resting in the opinion of 
their own abilities, are happily gulled by such conten- 
tation ; wherein pride, self-conceit, confidence, and 
opiniatrity, will hardly suffer any to complain of imper- 
fection. To think themselves in the right, or all that 
right, or only that, which they do or think, is a fallacy 
of high content; though others laugh in their sleeves, 
and look upon them as in a deluded state of judgment: 
wherein notwithstanding 'twere but a civil piece of com- 
placency to suffer them to sleep who would not wake, 
to let them rest in their securities, nor by dissent or 
opposition to stagger their contentments. 

14* 



162 CHRISTIAN MORALS. 



1 



i 



IX. Since the brow speaks often true, since eyes 
and noses have tongues, and the countenance proclaims 
the heart and inchnations ; let observation so far instruct 
thee in physiognomical lines, as to be some rule for thy 
distinction, and guide for thy affection unto such as loojc 
most like men. Mankind, methinks, is comprehended in 
a few faces, if we exclude all visages which any way 
participate of symmetries and schemes of look common 
unto other animals. For as though man were the 
extract of the world, in whom all were in coagulato, 
which in their forms were in soluio and at extension ; 
we often observe that men do most act those creatures, 
whose constitution, parts, and complexion, do most pre- 
dominate in their mixtures. This is a corner-stone in 
physiognomy, and holds some truth not only in particu- 
lar persons but also in whole nations. There are, there- 
fore, provincial faces, national lips and noses, which 
testify not only the natures of those countries, but of 
those which have them elsewhere. Thus we may make 
England the whole earth, dividing it not only into 
Europe, Asia, Africa, but the particular regions thereof, 
and may in some latitude affirm, that there are Egyp- 
tians, Scythians, Indians, among us ; who though born 
in England, yet carry the faces and air of those coun- 
tries, and are also agreeable and correspondent unto 
their natures. Faces look uniformly unto our eyes ; how 
they appear unto some animals of a more piercing or 
differing sight, who are able to discover the inequalities, 
rubs, and hairiness of the skin, is not without good 
doubt ; and therefore in reference unto man, Cupid is 
said to be blind. Affection should not be too sharp-eyed, § 
and love is not to be made by magnifying glasses. If 
things were seen as they truly are, the beauty of bodies 



CHRISTIAN MORALS. 163 

would be much abridged. And therefore, the wise Con- 
triver hath drawn the pictures and outsides of things 
softly and amiably unto the natural edge of our eyes, 
not leaving them able to discover those uncomely aspe- 
rities which make oyster-shells in good faces, and 
hedgehogs even in Venus's moles. 

X. Court not felicity too far, and weary not the 
favourable hand of fortune. Glorious actions have their 
times, extent, and non ultras. To put no end unto 
attempts were to make prescription of successes, and to 
bespeak unhappiness at the last. For the line of our 
lives is drawn with white and black vicissitudes, wherein 
the extremes hold seldom one complexion. That Pompey 
should obtain the surname of great at twenty- five years, 
that men in their young and active day should be fortu- 
nate and perform notable things, is no observation of 
deep wonder, they having the strength of their fates 
before them, nor yet acted their parts in the world, for 
which they were brought into it : whereas men of years, 
matured for counsels and designs, seem to be beyond 
the vigour of their active fortunes, and high exploits of 
life, providentially ordained unto ages best agreeable 
unto them. And, therefore, many brave men finding 
their fortune grow faint, and feeling its declination, have 
timely withdrawn themselves from great attempts, and 
so escaped the ends of mighty men, disproportionable to 
their beginnings. But magnanimous thoughts have so 
dimmed the eyes of many, that forgetting the very 
essence of fortune, and the vicissitude of good and evil, 
they apprehend no bottom in felicity ; and so have been 
still tempted on unto mighty actions, reserved for their de- 
structions. For fortune lays the plot of our adversities 
in the foundation of our felicities, blessing us in the first 



164 CHRISTIAN MORALS. 



1 



quadrate to blast us more sharply in the last. And since 
in the highest felicities there lieth a capacity of the 
lowest miseries, she hath this advantage from our hap- 
piness to make us truly miserable. For to become 
acutely miserable we are to be first happy. Affliction 
smarts most in the most happy state, as having some- 
what in it of Belisarius at beggars' bush, or Bajazet in 
the grate. And this the fallen angels severely under- 
stand, who having acted their first part in heaven, are 
made sharply miserable by transition, and more afflic- 
tively feel the contrary state of hell. 

XI. Carry no careless eye upon the unexpected scenes 
of things ; but ponder the acts of Providence in the pub- 
lick ends of great and notable men, set out unto the view 
of all for no common memorandums. The tragical exits 
and unexpected periods of some eminent persons cannot 
but amuse considerate observators ; wherein notwith- 
standing, most men seem to see by extramission, without 
reception or self-reflection, and conceive themselves un- 
concerned by the fallacy of their own exemption: 
whereas the mercy of God hath singled out but few to 
be the signals of his justice, leaving the generality of 
mankind to the pedagogy of example. But the inadver- 
tency of our natures not well apprehending this favour- 
able method and merciful decimation, and that he sheweth 
in some what others also deserve, they entertain no sense 
of his hand beyond the stroke of themselves. Whereupon 
the whole becomes necessarily punished, and the con- 
tracted hand of God extended unto universal judgments ; 
from whence nevertheless, the stupidity of our tempers 
receives but faint impressions, and in the most tragical 
state of times holds but starts of good motions. So that 
to continue us in goodness there must be iterated returns 



CHRISTIAN MORALS. 165 

of misery, and a circulation in afflictions is necessary. 
And since we cannot be wise by warnings, since plagues 
are insignificant, except we be personally plagued, since 
also we cannot be punished unto amendment by proxy 
or commutation, nor by vicinity, but contaction ; there 
is an unhappy necessity that we must smart in our own 
skins, and the provoked arm of the Almighty must fall 
upon ourselves. The capital sufferings of others are 
rather our monitions than acquitments. There is but 
one who died salvifically for us, and able to say unto 
death, hitherto shalt thou go and no further ; only one 
enlivening death, which makes gardens of graves, and 
that which was sowed in corruption to arise and flourish 
in glory ; when death itself shall die, and living shall have 
no period, when the damned shall mourn at the funeral 
of death, when life not death shall be the wages of sin, 
when the second death shall prove a miserable life, and 
destruction shall be courted. 

XII. Although their thoughts may seem too severe, 
who think that few ill-natured men go to heaven ; yet 
it may be acknowledged that good-natured persons are 
best founded for that place ; who enter the world with 
good dispositions, and natural graces, more ready to be 
advanced by impressions from above, and christianized 
unto pieties ; who carry about them plain and down- 
right-dealing minds, humility, mercy, charity, and vir- 
tues acceptable to God and man. But whatever success 
they may have as to heaven, they are the acceptable 
men on earth, and happy is he who hath his quiver full 
of them for his friends. These are not the dens wherein 
falsehood lurks, and hypocrisy hides its head, wherein 
frowardness makes its nest, or where malice, hard- 
heartedness, and oppression love to dwell ; not those by 



166 CHRISTIAN MORALS. 



1 



I 



whom the poor get little, and the rich sometime lose all ; 
men not of retracted looks, but who carry their hearts 
in their faces, and need not to be looked upon with per- 
spectives ; not sordidly or mischievously ingrateful ; 
who cannot learn to ride upon the neck of the afflicted, 
nor load the heavy laden, but who keep the temple of 
Janus shut by peaceable and quiet tempers ; who make 
not only the best friends, but the best enemies as easier 
to forgive than offend, and ready to pass by the second 
offence before they avenge the first ; who make natural 
royalists, obedient subjects, kind and merciful princes, 
verified in our own, one of the best-natured kings of this 
throne. Of the old Roman emperours the best were the 
best natured ; though they made but a small number, 
and might be writ in a ring. Many of the rest were as 
bad men as princes ; humourists rather than of good 
humours ; and of good natural parts rather than of good 
natures ; which did but arm their bad inclinations, and 
make them wittily wicked. 

XIII. With what shift and pains we come into the 
world, we remember not ; but 'tis commonly found no 
easy matter to get out of it. Many have studied to ex- 
asperate the ways of death, but fewer hours have been 
spent to soften that necessity. That the smoothest way 
unto the grave is made by bleeding, as common opinion 
presumeth, beside the sick and fainting languors, which 
accompany that effusion, the experiment in Lucan and, ' 
Seneca will make us doubt ; under which the noble 
stoick so deeply laboured, that to conceal his affliction 
he was fain to retire from the sight of his wife, and not 
ashamed to implore the merciful hand of his physician 
to shorten his misery therein. Ovid,* the old heroes, 

* Demito naufragium, mors mihi miinus erit. 



CHRISTIAN MORALS. 167 

and the stoicks, who were so afraid of drowning, as 
dreading thereby the extinction of their soul, which they 
conceived to be a fire, stood probably in fear of an 
easier way of death ; wherein the water, entering the 
possessions of air, makes a temperate suffocation, and 
kills as it were without a fever. Surely many, who 
have had the spirit to destroy themselves, have not been 
ingenious in the contrivance thereof 'Twas a dull way 
practised by Themistocles* to overwhelm himself with 
bulls-blood, who, being an Athenian, might have held 
an easier theory of death from the state-potion of his 
country ; from which Socrates in Plato seemed not to 
suffer much more than from the fit of an ague. Cato 
is much to be pitied, who mangled himself with poniards ; 
and Hannibal seems more subtle, who carried his de- 
livery not in the point, but the pummel of his sword.f 

The Egyptians were merciful contrivers, who de- 
stroyed their malefactors by asps, charming their senses 
into an invincible sleep, and killing as it were with 
Hermes his rod. The Turkish emperourj odious for 
other cruelty, was herein a remarkable master of mercy, 
killing his favourite in his sleep, and sending him from 
the shade into the house of darkness. He who had been 
thus destroyed would hardly have bled at the presence 
of his destroyer ; when men are already dead by meta- 
phor, and pass but from one sleep unto another, wanting 
herein the eminent part of severity, to feel themselves 
to die, and escaping the sharpest attendant of death, the 
lively apprehension thereof But to learn to die, is better 

* Plutarch. 

t Pummel, wherein he is said to have carried something whereby 
upon a struggle or despair he might deliver himself from all misfortunes. 
t Solyman. — Turkish History, 



168 CHRISTIAN MORALS. 

than to study the ways of dying. Death will find some 
ways to untie or cut the most gordian knots of life, and 
make men's miseries as mortal as themselves : whereas 
evil spirits, as undying substances, are unseparable from 
their calamities ; and therefore they everlastingly strug- 
gle under their angustias, and bound up with immor- 
tality can never get out of themselves. 



I 



THE THIRD PART. 



I. 'Tis hard to find a whole age to imitate, or what 
century to propose for example. Some have been far 
more approvable than others ; but virtue and vice, 
panegyricks and satires, scatteringly to be found in all. 
History sets down not only things laudable, but abomi- 
nable; things which should never have been or never 
have been known; so that noble patterns must be fetcht 
here and there from single persons rather than whole 
nations, and from all nations rather than any one. The 
world was early bad, and the first sin the most deplo- 
rable of any. The younger world afforded the oldest 
men, and perhaps the best and the worst, when length 
of days made virtuous habits heroical and immovable, 
vicious, inveterate and irreclaimable. And since 'tis 
said that the imaginations of their hearts were evil, 
only evil, and continually evil, it may be feared that 
their sins held pace with their lives ; and their longevity 
swelling their impieties, the longanimity of God would 
no longer endure such vivacious abominations. Their 
impieties were surely of a deep dye, which required the 
whole element of water to wash them away, and over- 
whelmed their memories with themselves ; and so shut 
up the first windows of time, leaving no histories of 
those longevous generations, when men might have 
been properly historians, when Adam might have read 

15 



170 CHRISTIAN MORALS. 

long lectures unto Methuselah, and Methuselah unto 
Noah. For had we been happy in just historical 
accounts of that unparalleled world, we might have 
been acquainted with wonders, and have understood 
not a little of the acts and undertakings of Moses his 
mighty men, and men of renown of old ; which might 
have enlarged our thoughts, and made the world older 
unto us. For the unknown part of time shortens the 
estimation, if not the compute of it. What hath escaped 
our knowledge falls not under our consideration, and 
what is and will be latent is little better than non- 
existent. 

II. Some things are dictated for our instruction, some 
acted for our imitation, wherein 'tis best to ascend unto 
the highest conformity, and to the honour of the ex- 
emplar. He honours God who imitates him. For 
what we virtuously imitate we approve and admire; 
and since we delight not to imitate inferiours, we 
aggrandize and magnify those we imitate ; since also 
we are most apt to imitate those we love, we testify 
our affection in our imitation of the inimitable. To 
affect to be like, may be no imitation : to act, and not to 
be what we pretend to imitate, is but a mimical confor- 
mation, and carrieth no virtue in it. Lucifer imitated 
not God when he said he would be like the Highest, 
and he imitated not Jupiter who counterfeited thunder. 
Where imitation can go no farther, let admiration step 
on, whereof there is no end in the wisest form of men. 
Even angels and spirits have enough to admire in their 
sublimer natures, admiration being the act of the crea- 
ture, and not of God, who doth not admire himself. 
Created natures allow of swelling hyperboles ; nothing 
can be said hyperbolically of God, nor will his attri- 



CHRISTIAN MORALS. 171 

butes admit of expressions above their own exuperances. 
Trismegistus his circle, whose centre is everywhere, 
and circumference nowhere, was no hyperbole. Words 
cannot exceed, where they cannot express enough. 
Even the most winged thoughts fall at the setting out, 
and reach not the portal of Divinity. 

III. In bivious theorems and Janus-faced doctrines let 
virtuous considerations state the determination. Look 
upon opinions as thou dost upon the moon, and choose 
not the dark hemisphere for thy contemplation. Em- 
brace not the opacous and blind side of opinions, but 
that which looks most luciferously or influentially unto 
goodness. 'Tis better to think that there are guardian 
spirits, than that there are no spirits to guard us ; that 
vicious persons are slaves, than that there is any servi- 
tude in virtue ; that times past have been better than 
times present, than that times were always bad ; and 
that to be men it sufRceth to be no better than men in 
all ages, and so promiscuously to swim down the turbid 
stream, and make up the grand confusion. Sow not 
thy understanding with opinions which make nothing 
of iniquities, and fallaciously extenuate transgressions. 
Look upon vices and vicious objects, with hyperbohcal 
eyes, and rather enlarge their dimensions, that their 
unseen deformities may not escape thy sense, and their 
poisonous parts and stings may appear massy and 
monstrous unto thee ; for the undiscerned particles and 
atoms of evil deceive us, and we are undone by the in- 
visibles of seeming goodness. We are only deceived 
in what is not discerned, and to err is but to be blind 
or dimsighted as to some perceptions. 

IV. To be honest in a right line* and virtuous by 

* Liiica recta brevissima. 



172 CHRISTIAN MORALS. 

epitome, be firm unto such principles of goodness, as 
carry in them volumes of instruction and may abridge 
thy labour. And since instructions are many, hold 
close unto those whereon the rest depend. So may we 
have all in a few, and the law and the prophets in a 
rule ; the sacred writ in stenography, and the Scripture 
in a nutshell. To pursue the osseous and solid part of 
goodness, which gives stability and rectitude to all the 
rest ; to settle on fundamental virtues, and bid early de- 
fiance unto mother-vices, which carry in their bowels 
the seminals of other iniquities, makes a short cut in 
goodness, and strikes not off an head but the whole 
neck of hydra. For we are carried into the dark lake, 
like the Egyptian river into the sea, by seven principal 
ostiaries ; the mother-sins of that number are the deadly 
engines of evil spirits that undo us, and even evil spirits 
themselves, and he who is under the chains thereof is 
not without a possession. Mary Magdalene had more 
than seven devils, if these with their imps were in her, 
and he who is thus possessed may literally be named 
Legion. Where such plants grow and prosper, look 
for no champian or region void of thorns, but produc- 
tions like the tree of Goa* and forests of abomination. 

V. Guide not the hand of God, nor order the finger 
of the Almighty, unto thy will and pleasure; but sit 
quiet in the soft showers of providence, and favourable 
distributions in this world, either to thyself or others. 
And since not only judgments have their errands, but 
mercies their commissions, snatch not at every favour, 
nor think thyself passed by, if they fall upon thy neigh- 

* Arbor Goa de Ruyz, or Ficus Tndlca, whose branches send down 
shoots which root in the g^round, from whence there successively rise 
others, till one tree becomes a wood. 



1 



CHRISTIAN MORALS. 173 

hour. Rake not up envious displacences at things suc- 
cessful unto others, which the wise Disposer of all 
thinks not fit for thyself. Reconcile the events of things 
unto both beings, that is, of this world and the next ; so 
will there not seem so many riddles in providence, nor 
various inequalities in the dispensation of things below. 
If thou dost not anoint thy face, yet put not on sack- 
cloth at the felicities of others. Repining at the good 
draws on rejoicing at the evils of others, and so falls 
into that inhuman vice for which so few languages 
have a name.* The blessed spirits above rejoice at 
our happiness below ; but to be glad at the evils of one 
another is beyond the malignity of hell, and falls not on 
evil spirits, who, though they rejoice at our unhappi- 
ness, take no pleasure at the afflictions of their own 
society or of their fellow natures. Degenerous heads ! 
who must be fain to learn from such examples, and to 
be taught from the school of hell. 

VI. Grain not thy vicious stains, nor deepen those 
swart tinctures, which temper, infirmity, or ill habits 
have set upon thee ; and fix not, by iterated deprava- 
tions, what time might efface or virtuous washes ex- 
punge. He who thus still advanceth in iniquity, deepen- 
eth his deformed hue, turns a shadow into night, and 
makes himself a negro in the black jaundice ; and so 
becomes one of those lost ones, the disproportionate 
pores of whose brains afford no entrance unto good 
motions, but reflect and frustrate all counsels, deaf unto 
the thunder of the laws, and rocks unto the cries of 
charitable commiserators. He who hath had the pa- 
tience of Diogenes, to make orations unto statues, may 

* 'RT/lt3t//J6KlX(-t. 

15* 



174 



CHRISTIAN MORALS. 



more sensibly apprehend how all words fall to the 
ground, spent upon such a surd and earless generation 
of men, stupid unto all instruction, and rather requiring 
an exorcist than an orator for their conversion. 

VII. Burden not the back of Aries, Leo, or Taurus, 
with thy faults, nor make Saturn, Mars, or Venus, 
guilty of thy follies. Think not to fasten thy imperfec- 
tions on the stars, and so despairingly conceive thyself 
under a fatality of being evil. Calculate thyself within, 
seek not thyself in the moon, but in thine own orb or 
microcosmical circumference. Let celestial aspects 
admonish and advertise, not conclude and determine 
thy ways. For since good and bad stars moralize not 
our actions, and neither excuse or commend, acquit or 
condemn our good or bad deeds at the present or last 
bar, since some are astrologically well disposed who 
are morally highly vicious ; not celestial figures, but 
virtuous schemes must denominate and state our 
actions. If we rightly understood the names whereby 
God calleth the stars, if we knew his name for the 
dogstar, or by what appellation Jupiter, Mars, and 
Saturn, obey his will, it might be a welcome acces- 
sion unto astrology, which speaks great things, and 
is fain to make use of appellations from Greek and 
barbarick systems. Whatever influences, impulsions, 
or inclinations there be from the lights above, it were a 
piece of wisdom to make one of those wise men* who 
overrule their stars, and with their own militia contend 
with the host of heaven. Unto which attempt there 
want no auxiliaries from the whole strength of morality* 
supplies from Christian ethicks, influences also and illu- 



Sapiens dominabitur astris. 



CHRISTIAN MORALS. 175 

ininations from above, more powerful than the Hghts of 
heaven. 

VIII. Confound not the distinctions of thy life which 
nature hath divided ; that is, youth, adolescence, man- 
hood, and old age ; nor in these divided periods, wherein 
thou art in a manner four, conceive thyself but one. 
Let every division be happy in its proper virtues, nor 
one vice run through all. Let each distinction have its 
salutary transition, and criticalUy deliver thee from the 
imperfections of the former ; so ordering the whole, 
that prudence and virtue may have the largest section. 
Do as a child but when thou art a child, and ride not 
on a reed at twenty. He who hath not taken leave of 
the follies of his youth, and in his maturer state scarce 
got out of that division, disproportionately dividetK his 
days, crowds up the latter part of his life, and leaves 
too narrow a corner for the age of wisdom, and so 
hath room to be a man scarce longer than he hath 
been a youth. Rather than to make this confusion, 
anticipate the virtues of age, and live long without the 
infirmities of it. So may'st thou count up thy days as 
some do Adam's,* that is by anticipation ; so may'st 
thou be coetaneous unto thy elders, and a father unto 
thy contemporaries. 

IX. While others are curious in the choice of good 
air, and chiefly solicitous for healthful habitations, study 
thou conversation, and be critical in thy consortion. 
The aspects, conjunctions, and configurations of the 
stars, which mutually diversify, intend, or qualify their 
influences, are but the varieties of their nearer or farther 
conversation with one another, and like the consor- 

* Adam, thought to be created in the state of man, about thirty 
years old. 



176 CHRISTIAN MORALS. 

tion of men, whereby they become better or worse, and 
even exchange their natures. Since men live by ex- 
amples, and will be imitating something, order thy imita- 
tion to thy improvement, not thy ruin. Look not for 
roses in Attalus his garden,* or wholesome flowers in a 
venemous plantation. And since there is scarce any 
one bad, but some others are the worse for him, tempt 
not contagion by proximity, and hazard not thyself in 
the shadow of corruption. He who hath not early 
sufl'ered this shipwreck, and in his younger days escaped 
this Charybdis may make a happy voyage, and not come 
in with black sails into the port. Self-conversation, or 
to be alone, is better than such consortion. Some 
schoolmen tell us, that he is properly alone, with whom 
in the same place there is no other of the same species. 
Nabuchodonozor was alone, though among the beasts 
of the field ; and a wise man may be tolerably said to 
be alone, though with a rabble of people little better 
than beasts about him. Unthinking heads, w^ho have 
not learned to be alone, are in a prison to themselves, 
if they be not also with others ; w^hereas, on the con- 
trary, they whose thoughts are in a fair, and hurry 
within, are sometimes fain to retire into company, to 
be out of the crowd of themselves. He who must 
needs have company, must needs have sometimes bad 
company. Be able to be alone. Lose not the advan- 
tage of solitude, and the society of thyself, nor be only 
content, but delight to be alone and single with Omni- 
presency. He who is thus prepared, the day is not 
uneasy nor the night black unto him. Darkness may 
bound his eyes, not his imagination. In his bed he may 

* Attains made a garden which contained only venemous plants. 



CHRISTIAN MORALS. 177 

lie, like Pompey and his sons,* in all quarters of the 
earth ; may speculate the universe, and enjoy the whole 
world in the hermitage of himself. Thus the old 
ascetick Christians found a paradise in a desert, and 
with little converse on earth held a conversation in 
heaven ; thus they astronomized in caves, and though 
they beheld not the stars, had the glory of heaven 
l)efore them. 

X. Let the characters of good things stand indelibly 
in thy mind, and thy thoughts be active on them. Trust 
not too much unto suggestions from reminiscential 
amulets, or artificial memorandums. Let the morti- 
tying Janus of Covarrubias be in thy daily thoughts, not 
only on thy hand and signets.f Rely not alone upon 
silent and dumb remembrances. Behold not deaths'- 
lieads till thou dost not see them, nor look upon morti- 
iying objects till thou overlookest them. Forget not 
liow assuefaction unto any thing minorates the passion 
from it, how constant objects lose their hints, and steal 
an inadvertisement upon us. There is no excuse to 
forget what every thing prompts unto us. To thought- 
tul observators, the whole world is a phylactery, and 
every thing we see an item of the wisdom, power, 
or goodness of God. Happy are they who verify their 
amulets, and make their phylacteries speak in their lives 
and actions. To run on in despight of the revulsions 
and pull-backs of such remoras, aggravates our trans- 
gressions. When deaths'-heads on our hands have no 

* Pompeios Juvenes Asia atque Eiiropa, sed ipsum terra tegit Libyes. 

t Don Sebastian de Covarrubias, writ three centuries of moral emblems 

in Spanish. In the Sfth of the second century he sets down two fact s 

avers^e, and conjoined Janus-like ; the one a gnllanl beautiful face, the 

other a death's-head face, with this motto out of Ovid's Metamorphosis, 

Quid fuerim,quid simquc, vide. 



178 CHRISTIAN MORALS. 



4 



influence upon our heads, and fleshless cadavers abate 
not the exorbitances of the flesh ; when crucifixes upon 
men's hearts suppress not their bad commotions, and 
his image who was murdered for us withholds not from 
blood and murder ; phylacteries prove but formalities, 
and their despised hints sharpen our condemnations. 

XL Look not for whales in the Euxine sea, or expect 
great matters where they are not to be found. Seek 
not for profundity in shallowness, or fertility in a wilder- 
ness. Place not the expectation of great happiness here 
below, or think to find heaven on earth ; wherein we 
must be content with embryon-felicities, and fruitions of 
doubtless faces. For the circle of our felicities makes 
but short arches. In every clime we are in a periscian 
state, and with our light our shadow and darkness walk 
about us. Our contentments stand upon the tops of 
pyramids ready to fall off", and the insecurity of their 
enjoyments abrupteth our tranquillities. What we mag- 
nify is magnificent, but, like to the colossus, noble with- 
out, stuflft with rubbidge and coarse metal within. Even 
the sun, whose glorious outside we behold, may have 
dark and smoky entrails. In vain we admire the lustre 
of any thing seen ; that which is truly glorious is invi- 
sible. Paradise was but a part of the earth, lost not 
only to our fruition but our knowledge. And if, accord- 
ing to old dictates, no man can be said to be happy be- 
fore death, the happiness of this life goes for nothing 
before it be over, and while we think ourselves happy 
we do but usurp that name. Certainly true beatitude 
groweth not on earth, nor hath this w^orld in it the ex- 
pectations we have of it. He swims in oil, and can 
hardly avoid sinking, who hath such light foundations 
to support him. 'Tis therefore happy that we have two 



I 



CHRISTIAN MORALS. 179 

worlds to hold on. To enjoy true happiness we must 
travel into a very far country, and even out of ourselves ; 
for the pearl we seek for is not to be found in the Indian, 
but in the empyrean ocean. 

XII. Answer not the spur of fury, and be not prodi- 
gal or prodigious in revenge. Make not one in the 
Historia horribilis ;* slay not thy servant for a broken 
glass, nor pound him in a mortar who ofFendeth thee ; 
supererogate not in the worst sense, and overdo not the 
necessities of evil; humour not the injustice of revenge. 
Be not stoically mistaken in the equality of sins, nor 
commutatively iniquous in the valuation of transgres- 
sions ; but weigh them in the scales of heaven, and by 
the weights of righteous reason. Think that revenge 
too high, which is but level with the offence. Let thy 
arrows of revenge fly short, or be aimed like those of 
Jonathan, to fall beside the mark. Too many there be 
to whom a dead enemy smells well, and who find musk 
and amber in revenge. The ferity of such minds holds 
no rule in retaliations, requiring too often a head for a 
tooth, and the supreme revenge for trespasses which a 
night's rest should obliterate. But patient meekness 
takes injuries like pills, not chewing but swallowing them 
down, laconically suffering, and silently passing them 
over ; while angered pride makes a noise, like Homeri- 
can Mars,f at every scratch of offences. Since women 
do most delight in revenge, it may seem but feminine 
manhood to be vindicative. If thou must needs have 
thy revenge of thine enemy, with a soft tongue break 

* A book so itititlcd, wherein are sundry horrid accounts, 
i Tu miser cxclarnas, ut Slentora vincere possis, 
Vol potius quantum Gradivus Homericus. — Juv. 



180 CHRISTIAN MORALS. 

his bones,* heap coals of fire on his head, forgive him 
and enjoy it. To forgive our enemies is a charming 
way of revenge, and a short Caesarian conquest, over- 
coming without a blow ; laying our enemies at our feet, 
under sorrow, shame, and repentance ; leaving our foes 
our friends, and solicitously inclined to grateful retalia- 
tions. Thus to return upon our adversaries is a healing 
way of revenge ; and to do good for evil a soft and 
melting ultion, a method taught from heaven to keep all 
smooth on earth. Common forcible ways make not an 
end of evil, but leave hatred and malice behind them. 
An enemy thus reconciled is little to be trusted, as want- 
ing the foundation of love and charity, and but for a 
time restrained by disadvantage or inability. If thou 
hast not mercy for others, yet be not cruel unto thyself 
To ruminate upon evils, to make critical notes upon in- 
juries, and be too acute in their apprehensions, is to add 
unto our own tortures, to feather the arrows of our ene- 
mies, to lash ourselves with the scorpions of our foes, 
and to resolve to sleep no more. For injuries long 
dreamt on take away at last all rest ; and he sleeps but 
like Regulus, who busieth his head about them. 

XIII. Amuse not thyself about the riddles of future 
things. Study prophecies when they are become histo- 
ries, and past hovering in their causes. Eye well things 
past and present, and let conjectural sagacity suffice for 
things to come. There is a sober latitude for prescience 
in contingences of discoverable tempers, whereby dis- 
cerning heads see sometimes beyond their eyes, and 
wise men become prophetical Leave cloudy predic- 
tions to their periods, and let appointed seasons have the 

* A soft tongue breaketh the bones. — Prov. xxv. 15. 



I 
I 

II 



CHRISTIAN MORALS. 181 

lot of their accomplishments. 'Tis too early to study 
such prophecies before they have been long made, before 
some train of their causes have already taken fire, laying 
open in part what lay obscure and before buried unto 
us. For the voice of prophecies is Hke that of whisper- 
ing-places ; they who are near or at a little distance hear 
nothing, those at the farthest extremity will understand 
all. But a retrograde cognition of times past, and things 
which have already been, is more satisfactory than a 
suspended knowledge of what is yet unexistent. And 
the greatest part of time being already wrapt up in 
things behind us, it's now somewhat late to bait after 
things before us ; for futurity still shortens, and time 
present sucks in time to come. What is prophetical in 
one age proves historical in another, and so must hold 
on unto the last of time, where there will be no room for 
prediction ; when Janus shall lose one face, and the long 
beard of time shall look like those of David's servants, 
shorn away upon one side, and when, if the expected 
Elias should appear, he might say much of what is past, 
not much of what's to come. 

XIV. Live unto the dignity of thy nature, and leave 
it not disputable at last, whether thou hast been a man ; 
or since thou art a composition of man and beast, how 
thou hast predominantly passed thy days, to state the 
denomination. Unman not therefore thyself by a bestial 
transformation, nor realize old fables. Expose not thy- 
self by four-footed manners unto monstrous draughts, and 
caricatura representations. Think not after the old Pytha- 
gorean conceit, what beast thou may'st be after death. 
Be not under any brutal metempsuchosis while thou 
livest, and walkest about erectly under the scheme of 
man. In thine own circumference, as in that of the 

16 



182 CHRISTIANMORALS. 

earth, let the rational horizon be larger than the sensi- 
ble, and the circle of reason than of sense. Let the divine 
part be upward, and the region of beast below. Other- 
wise, 'tis but to live invertedly, and with thy head unto 
the heels of thy antipodes. Desert not thy title to a 
divine particle and union with invisibles. Let true know- 
ledge and virtue tell the lower world thou art a part of 
the higher. Let thy thoughts be of things which have 
not entered into the hearts of beasts ; think of things 
long past, and long to come ; acquaint thyself with the 
choragium of the stars, and consider the vast expansion 
beyond them. Let intellectual tubes give thee a glance 
of things which visive organs reach not. Have a glimpse 
of incomprehensibles ; and thoughts of things which 
thoughts but tenderly touch. Lodge immaterials in thy 
head ; ascend unto invisibles ; fill thy spirit with spiritu- 
als, with the mysteries of faith, the magnalities of reli- 
gion, and thy life with the honour of God ; Avithout 
which, though giants in wealth and dignity, we are but 
dwarfs and pygmies in humanity, and may hold a pitiful 
rank in that triple division of mankind into heroes, men, 
and beasts. For though human souls are said to be 
equal, yet is there no small inequality in their operations ; 
some maintain the allowable station of men, many are 
far below it; and some have been so divine, as to 
approach the apogeum of their natures, and to be in the 
confinium of spirits. 

XV. Behold thyself by inward opticks and the crys- 
talline of thy soul. Strange it is that in the most perfect 
sense there should be so many fallacies, that we are fain 
to make a doctrine, and often to see by art. But the 
greatest imperfection is in our inward sight, that is, to 
be ghosts unto our own eyes, and while we are so sharp- 



CHRISTIAN MORALS. 183 

sighted as to look through others, to be invisible unto 
ourselves; for the inward eyes are more fallacious than 
the outward. The vices we scoff at in others Jauerh at 
us within ourselves. Avarice, pride, falshood, lie undis- 
cerned and blindly in us, even to the age of blindness ; 
and therefore, to see ourselves interiourly we are fain to 
borrow other men's eyes; wherein true friends are good 
informers, and censurers no bad friends. Conscience 
only, that can see without light, sits in the areopagy and 
dark tribunal of our hearts, surveying our thoughts and 
condemning their obliquities. Happy is that state of 
vision that can see without light, though all should look 
as before the creation, when there was not an eye to 
see, or light to actuate a vision : wherein notwithstand- 
ing, obscurity is only imaginable respectively unto eyes ; 
for unto God there was none, eternal light was ever ; 
created light was for the creation, not himself, and as 
he saw before the sun, may still also see without it. In 
the city of the new Jerusalem there is neither sun nor 
moon ; where glorified eyes must see by the archetypal 
sun, or the light of God, able to illuminate intellectual 
eyes, and make unknown visions. Intuitive perceptions 
in spiritual beings may perhaps hold some analogy unto 
vision ; but yet how they see us, or one another, what 
eye, what light, or what perception is required unto their 
intuition, is yet dark unto our apprehension ; and even 
how they see God, or how unto our glorified eyes the 
beatifical vision will be celebrated, another world must 
tell us, when perceptions will be new and we may hope 
to behold invisibles. 

XVI. When all looks fair about, and thou seest not a 
cloud so big as a hand to threaten thee, forget not the 
wheel of things ; think of sullen vicissitudes, but beat not 



184 CHRISTIAN MORALS. 

thy brains to foreknow them. Be armed against such 
obscurities rather by submission than fore-knowledge. 
The knowledge of future evils mortifies present felici- 
ties, and there is more content in the uncertainty or 
ignorance of them. This favour our Savour vouchsafed 
unto Peter, when he foretold not his death in plain terms, 
and so by an ambiguous and cloudy delivery dampt not 
the spirit of his disciples. But in the assured fore- 
knowledge of the deluge Noah lived many years under 
the affliction of a flood, and Jerusalem was taken, unto 
Jeremy, before it was besieged. And therefore the 
wisdom of astrologers, who speak of future things, hath 
wisely softened the severity of their doctrines ; and even 
m their sad predictions, while they tell us of inclination 
not coaction from the stars, they kill us not with Stygian 
oaths and merciless necessity, but leave us hopes of 
evasion. 

XVII. If thou hast the brow to endure the name of 
traitor, perjured, or oppressor, yet cover thy face when 
ingratitude is thrown at thee. If that degenerous vice 
j)ossess thee, hide thyself in the shadow of thy shame, 
and pollute not noble society. Grateful ingenuities are 
content to be obliged within some compass of retribu- 
tion, and being depressed by the weight of iterated 
favours, may so labour under their inabilities of requital, 
as to abate the content from kindnesses. But narrow 
self-ended souls make prescription of good offices, and 
obliged by often favours think others still due unto 
them ; whereas, if they but once fail, they prove so per- 
versely ungrateful, as to make nothing of former 
courtesies, and to bury all that's past. Such tempers 
pervert the generous course of things ; for they dis- 
courage the inclinations of noble minds, and make bene- 



i 



CHRISTIAN MORALS. 185 

ficiency cool unto acts of obligation, whereby the 
grateful world should subsist, and have their consola- 
tion. Common gratitude must be kept alive by the 
additionary fuel of new courtesies ; but generous grati- 
tudes, though but once well obliged, without quickening 
repetitions or expectation of new favours, have thankful 
minds for ever ; for they write not their obligations in 
sandy but marble memories, which wear not out but 
with themselves. 

XVIII. Think not silence the wisdom of fools, but, if 
rightly timed, the honour of wise men, who have not 
the infirmity, but the virtue of taciturnity, and speak 
not out of the abundance, but the well-weighed thoughts 
of their hearts. Such silence may be eloquence, and 
speak thy worth above the power of words. Make 
such a one thy friend, in whom princes may be happy, 
and great counsels successful. Let him have the key 
of thy heart, who hath the lock of his own, which no 
temptation can open ; where thy secrets may lastingly 
lie, hke the lamp in Olybius his urn,* alive and light, 
but close and invisible. 

XIX. Let thy oaths be sacred, and promises be made 
upon the altar of thy heart. Call not Jove to witness 
with a stone in one hand, and a straw in another,! and 
so make chaff and stubble of thy vows. Worldly 
spirits, whose interest is their belief, make cobwebs of 
obligations, and, if they can find ways to elude the urn 
of the praetor, will trust the thunderbolt of Jupiter ; and 
therefore if they should as deeply swear as Osman to 

* Which after many hundred years was found burning under ground 
and went out as soon as the air came to it. 
t Jovcm lipidem jurare. 

16* 



186 CHRISTIAN MORALS. 

Bethlem Gabor,* yet whether they would be bound by 
those chains, and not find ways to cut such Gordian 
knots, we could have no just assurance. But honest 
men's words are Stygian oaths, and promises inviolable. 
These are not the men for whom the fetters of law w-ere 
first forged ; they needed not the solemness of oaths ;t 
by keeping their faith they swear, and evacuate such 
confirmations. 

XX. Though the world be histrionical, and most men 
live ironically, yet be thou what thou singly art, and 
personate only thyself. Swim smoothly in the stream 
of thy nature, and live but one man. To single hearts 
doubling is discruciating ; such tempers must sweat to 
dissemble, and prove but hypocritical hypocrites. Si- 
mulation must be short ; men do not easily continue a 
counterfeiting life, or dissemble unto death. He who 
counterfeiteth, acts a part, and is as it were out of him- 
self; w^hich, if long, proves so irksome that men arc 
glad to pull off their vizards, and resume themselves 
again ; no practice being able to naturalize such unna- 
turals, or make a man rest content not to be himself. 
And therefore since sincerity is thy temper, let veracity 
be thy virtue, in words, manners, and actions. To ofl!er 
at iniquities, which have so little foundations in thee, 
were to be vicious up-hill, and strain for thy condemna- 
tion. Persons viciously inclined want no wheels to 
make them actively vicious, as having the elater and 
spring of their own natures to facilitate their iniquities. 
And therefore so many who are sinistrous unto good 

* See t!ie oath of Sultan Osnian in his life, in the addition to KnoUes 
his Turkish History. 

t Colendo fidem jurant. — Curtius. 



CHRISTIAN MORALS. 187 

actions, are ambi-dexterous unto bad, and Vulcans in 
virtuous paths, Achilleses in vicious motions. 

XXI. Rest not in the high-strained paradoxes of old 
philosophy, supported by naked reason and the reward 
of mortal fehcity, but labour in the ethicks of faith, 
built upon heavenly assistance and the happiness of 
both beings. Understand the rules, but swear not unto 
the doctrines of Zeno or Epicurus. Look beyond An- 
toninus, and terminate not thy morals in Seneca or 
Epictetus. Let not the twelve, but the two tables be 
thy law ; let Pythagoras be thy remembrancer, not 
thy textuary and final instructor ; and learn the vanity 
of the world rather from Solomon than Phocylydes. 
Sleep not in the dogmas of the Peripatus, Academy, or 
Porticus. Be a moralist of the mount, an Epictetus in 
the faith, and christianize thy notions. 

XXII. In seventy or eighty years a man may have a 
deep gust of the world, know what it is, what it can 
afford, and what 'tis to have been a man. Such a lati- 
tude of years may hold a considerable corner in the 
general map of time, and a man may have a curt 
epitome of the whole course thereof in the days of his 
own life ; may clearly see he hath but acted over his 
forefathers, what it was to live in ages past, and what 
living will be in all ages to come. 

He is like to be the best judge of time who hath lived 
to see about the sixtieth part thereof. Persons of short 
times may know what 'tia to live, but not the life of 
man, who, having little behind them, are but Januses of 
one face, and know not singularities enough to raise 
axioms of this world ; but such a compass of years will 
shev/ new examples of old things, parallelisms of occur- 
rences through the whole course of time, and nothing 



188 . CHRISTIAN MORALS. 



be monstrous unto him, who may in that time under 
stand not only the varieties of men, but the variation of 
himself, and how many men he hath been in that extent 
of time. 

He may have a close apprehension what it is to be 
forgotten, while he hath lived to find none who could 
remember his father, or scarce the friends of his youth, 
and may sensibly see with what a face in no long time 
oblivion will look upon himself His progeny may never 
be his posterity ; he may go out of the world less related 
than he came into it; and considering the frequent mor- 
tality in friends and relations, in such a term of time he 
may pass away divers years in sorrow and black habits, 
and leave none to mourn for himself; orbity may be 
his inheritance, and riches his repentance. 

In such a thread of time, and long observation of men, 
he may acquire a physiognomical intuitive knowledge ; 
judge the interiours by the outside, and raise conjectures 
at first sight ; and knowing what men have been, what 
they are, what children probably will be, may in the pre- 
sent age behold a good part and the temper of the next; 
and since so many live by the rules of constitution, and 
so few overcome their temperamental inclinations, make 
no improbable predictions. 

Such a portion of time will afford a large prospect 
backward, and authentick reflections how far he hath 
performed the great intention of his being, in the honour 
of his Maker ; whether he hath made good the princi- 
ples of his nature, and what he was made to be ; what 
characteristick and special mark he hath left, to be 
observable in his generation ; whether he hath lived to 
purpose or in vain, and what he hath added, acted, or 
performed, that might considerably speak him a man. 



1 



I 



CHRISTIAN MORALS. 189 

In such an age delights will be undelightful and plea- 
sures grow stale unto him ; antiquated theorems will 
revive, and Solomon's maxims be demonstrations unto 
him ; hopes or presumptions be over, and despair grow 
up of any satisfaction below. And having been long 
tossed in the ocean of this world, he will by that time 
feel the in-draught of another, unto which this seems but 
preparatory, and without it of no high value. He will ex- 
perimentally find the emptiness of all things, and the 
nothing of what is past ; and wisely grounding upon 
true Christian expectations, finding so much past, will 
wholly fix upon what is to come. He will long for 
perpetuity, and live as though he made haste to be 
happy. The last may prove the prime part of his life, 
and those his best days which he lived nearest heaven. 

XXIII. Live happy in the Elysium of a virtuously 
composed mind, and let intellectual contents exceed the 
delights wherein mere pleasurists place their paradise. 
Bear not too slack reins upon pleasure, nor let complexion 
or contagion betray thee unto the exorbitancy of delight. 
Make pleasure thy recreation or intermissive relaxation, 
not thy Diana, life and profession. Voluptuousness is 
as insatiable as covetousness. Tranquillity is better than 
jollity, and to appease pain than to invent pleasure. 
Our hard entrance into the world, our miserable going 
out of it, our sicknesses, disturbances, and sad ren- 
counters in it, do clamorously tell us we come not into 
the world to run a race of delight, but to perform the 
sober acts and serious purposes of man ; which to omit 
were foully to miscarry in the advantage of humanity, 
to play away an uniterable life, and to have lived in 
vain. Forget not the capital end, and frustrate not the 
opportunity of once living. Dream not of any kind of 



190 CHRISTIAN MORALS. 

metempsuchosis or transanimation, but into thine own 
body, and that after a long time, and then also unto wail 
or bliss, according to thy first and fundamental life. Upon 
a curricle in this world depends a long course of the 
next, and upon a narrow scene here an endless expan- 
sion hereafter. In vain some think to have an end of 
their beings with their lives. Things cannot get out of 
their natures, or be or not be in despight of their con- 
stitutions. Rational existences in heaven perish not all, 
and but partially on earth ; that which is thus once will 
in some way be always ; the first living human soul is 
still alive, and all Adam hath found no period. 

XXIV. Since the stars of heaven do differ in glory ; 
since it hath pleased the Almighty hand to honour the 
north pole with lights above the south ; since there are 
some stars so bright that they can hardly be looked on, 
some so dim that they can scarce be seen, and vast 
numbers not to be seen at all, even by artificial eyes ; 
read thou the earth in heaven, and things below from 
above. Look contentedly upon the scattered difference 
of things, and expect not equality, in lustre, dignity, or 
perfection, in regions or persons below ; where nume-' 
rous numbers must be content to stand like lacteous or 
nebulous stars, little taken notice of, or dim in their 
generations. All which may be contentedly allowable 
in the aflfairs and ends of this world, and in suspension 
unto what will be in the order of things hereafter, and 
the new system of mankind which will be in the world 
to come ; when the last may be the first and the first 
the last ; when Lazarus may sit above Caesar, and the 
just obscure on earth shall shine like the sun in heaven ; A 
when personations shall cease, and histrionism of happi- ■ 



m 



CHEISTIAN MORALS. 191 

ness be over ; when reality shall rule, and all shall be 
as they shall be for ever. 

XXV. When the stoick said that life v^ould not be 
accepted, if it were offered unto such as knew it,* he 
spoke too meanly of that state of being which placeth 
us in the form of men. It more depreciates the value 
of this life, that men would not live it over again ; for 
although they would still live on, yet few or none can 
endure to think of being twice the same men upon earth, 
and some had rather never have lived than to tread 
over their days once more. Cicero in a prosperous 
state had not the patience to think of beginning in a 
cradle again. Job would not only curse the day of his 
nativity, but also of his renascency, if he were to act 
over his disasters, and the miseries of the dunghill. 
But the greatest underweening of this life is to under- 
value that, unto which this is but exordial or a passage 
leading unto it. The great advantage of this mean life 
is thereby to stand in a capacity of a better ; for the 
colonies of heaven must be drawn from earth, and the 
sons of the first Adam are only heirs unto the second. 
Thus Adam came into this world with the power also 
of another nor only to replenish the earth, but the ever- 
lasting mansions of heaven. Where we w^ere when the 
foundations of the earth w^ere laid, when the morning 
stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for 
joy,f he must answer who asked it, who understands 
entities of preordination, and beings yet unbeing ; who 
hath in his intellect the ideal existences of things, and 
entities before their extances. Though it looks but hke 
an imaginary kind of existency to be before w^e are, yet 

* Vitam nemo accipcrct, si d iretur scientibus. — Seneca, 

* Job xxxviii. 17. 



192 CHRISTIAN MORALS. 

since we are under the decree or prescience of a sure 
and omnipotent Power, it may be somewhat more than 
a non-entity to be in that mind unto which all things 
are present. 

XXVI. If the end of the world shall have the same 
foregoing signs, as the period of empires, states, and 
dominions in it, that is, corruption of manners, inhuman 
degenerations, and deluge of iniquities ; it may be 
doubted whether that final time be so far off, of whose 
day and hour there can be no prescience. But while 
all men doubt and none can determine how long the 
world shall last, some may wonder that it hath spun 
out so long and unto our days. For if the Almighty 
had not determined a fixed duration unto it, according 
to his mighty and merciful designments in it ; if he had 
not said unto it, as he did unto a part of it, hitherto 
shalt thou go and no further ; if we consider the inces- 
sant and cutting provocations from the earth, it is not 
without amazement how his patience hath permitted so 
long a continuance unto it; how he who cursed the 
earth in the first days of the first man, and drowned it 
in the tenth generation after, should thus lastingly con- 
tend with flesh and yet defer the last flames. For since 
he is sharply provoked every moment, yet punisheth to 
pardon, and forgives to forgive again ; what patience 
could be content to act over such vicissitudes, or accept 
of repentances which must have after-penitences, his 
goodness can only tell us. And surely if the patience 
of heaven were not proportionable unto the provoca- 
tions from earth, there needed an intercessor not only 
for the sins, but the duration of this world, and to lead 
it up unto the present computation. Without such a 
merciful longanimity, the heavens would never be so 



CHRISTIAN MORALS. 193 

aged as to grow old like a garment ; it were in vain to 
infer from the doctrine of the sphere, that the time- 
might come when Capella, a noble northern star, would 
have its motion in the equator ; that the northern 
zodiacal signs would at length be the southern, the 
southern the northern, and Capricorn become our 
Cancer. However therefore the wisdom of the Creator 
hath ordered the duration of the world, yet since the end 
thereof brings the accomplishment of our happiness, 
since some would be content that it should have no 
end, since evil men and spirits do fear it may be too 
short, since good men hope it may not be too long ; the 
prayer of the saints under the altar will be the supplica- 
tion of the righteous world ; that his mercy would 
abridge their languishing expectation and hasten the 
accomplishment of their happy state to come. 

XXVII. Though good men are often taken away 
from the evil to come, though some in evil days have 
been glad that they were old, nor long to behold the 
iniquities of a wicked world, or judgments threatened 
by them ; yet is it no small satisfaction unto honest 
minds to leave the world in virtuous well-tempered 
times, under a prospect of good to come, and continua- 
tion of worthy ways acceptable unto God and man. 
Men who die in deplorable days, which they regretfully 
behold, have not their eyes closed with the like content ; 
while they cannot avoid the thoughts of proceeding or 
growing enormities, displeasing unto that Spirit unto 
whom they arc then going, whose honour they desire 
in all times and throughout all generations. If Lucifer 
could be freed from his dismal place, he would little 
care though the rest were left behind. Too many there 

17 



194 CHRISTIAN MORALS. 

may be of Nero's mind, who if their own turn were 
served would not regard what became of others, and, 
when they die themselves, care not if all perish. But 
good men's wishes extend beyond their lives, for the 
happiness of times to come and never to be known unto 
them. And therefore while so many question prayers 
for the dead, they charitably pray for those who are 
not yet alive ; they are not so enviously ambitious to go 
to heaven by themselves ; they cannot but humbly wish, 
that the little flock might be greater, the narrow gate 
wider, and that, as many are called, so not a few might 
be chosen. 

XXVIII. That a greater number of angels remained 
in heaven than fell from it, the schoolmen will tell us ; 
that the number of blessed souls will not come short of 
that vast number of fallen spirits, we have the favour- 
able calculation of others. What age or century hath 
sent most souls unto heaven, he can tell who vouch- 
safeth that honour unto them. Though the number of 
the blessed must be complete before the world can pass 
away, yet since the world itself seems in the wane, and 
we have no such comfortable prognosticks of latter times, 
since a greater part of time is spun than is to come, 
and the blessed roll already much replenished ; happy 
are those pieties which solicitously look about and 
hasten to make one of that already much filled and 
abbreviated list to come. 

XXIX. Think not thy time short in this world, since 
the world itself is not long. The created world is but 
a small parenthesis in eternity, and a short interposi- 
tion, for a time, between such a state of duration as 
was before it and may be after it. And if we should 



CHUISTIAN MORALS. 195 

allow of the old tradition that the world should last six 
thousand years, it could scarce have the name of old, 
since the first man lived near a sixth part thereof, and 
seven Methuselahs would exceed its whole duration. 
However to palliate the shortness of our lives, and 
somewhat to compensate our brief term in this world, 
it's good to know as much as we can of it, and also, so 
far as possibly in us lieth, to hold such a theory of times 
past, as though we had seen the same. He who hath 
thus considered the world, as also how therein things 
long past have been answered by things present, how- 
matters in one age have been acted over in another, 
and how there is nothing new under the sun, may con- 
ceive himself in some manner to have lived from the 
beginning, and to be as old as the world ; and if he 
should still live on, 'twould be but the same thing. 

XXX. Lastly, if length of days be thy portion, make 
it not thy expectation. Reckon not upon long life; 
think every day the last, and live always beyond thy 
account. He that so often surviveth his expectation 
lives many lives, and will scarce complain of the short- 
ness of his days. Time past is gone like a shadow ; 
make time to come present. Approximate thy latter 
times by present apprehensions of them; be like a 
neighbour unto the grave, and think there is but little 
to come. And since there is something of us that will 
still live on, join both lives together, and live in one but 
for the other. He who thus ordereth the purposes of 
this life will never be far from the next, and is in some 
manner already in it, by a happy conformity, and close 
apprehension of it. And if, as we have elsewhere de- 
clared, any have been so happy as personally to under- 



196 CHRISTIAN MORALS. 

stand Christian annihilation, ecstasy, exohition, trans- 
formation, the kiss of the spouse, and ingression into the 
divine shadow, according to mystical' theology ; they 
have already had an handsome anticipation of heaven, 
the world is in a manner over, and the earth in ashes 
unto them. 



FINIS. 



RESEMBLANT PASSAGES 



RELIGIO MEDICI, AND THE TASK. 



The Author of the task was not one of those un- 
affectionate beings who have neither bosom-friends nor 
favourite pocket-companions. AUhough the fact is no- 
where recorded I am persuaded that religio medici 
was one of his darhng books. They who hesitate to 
adopt this conclusion may yet be glad to have the pas- 
sages brought together on which it is founded, for it 
cannot be undelightful to see the unanimity of thinking 
which existed between two of the purest minds that 
have adorned our country. 

Will it be thought that I mean to disparage dear 
Cowper by bringing forward these analogies ? Far 
from it ! they make me love him the more. There are 
but few books in the world, worth reading, which do 
not disclose their authors' acquaintance with the wis- 
dom to be found in other books that were written before 
them. 

J. P. 



200 SIR T. BROWNE. 

There is no church whose every part so squares unto 
my conscience as this church of England, to whose 
faith I am a sworn subject. 

Reiigio Medici, page 28. 

The world was made to be inhabited by beasts, but 
studied and contemplated by man ; 'tis the debt of our 
reason we owe unto God, and the homage we pay for 
not being beasts. 

The wisdom of God receives small honour from those 
vulgar heads that rudely stare about, and with a gross 
rusticity admire his works. Those highly magnify him, 
whose judicious inquiry into his acts, and deliberate 
research into his creatures, return the duty of a devout 
and learned admiration. 

Teach my endeavours so thy works to read, 
That learning them, in Thee I may proceed. 

Rel. Med. p. 40. 

What reason may not go to school to the wisdom of 
bees, ants, and spiders ? Ruder heads stand amazed at 
those prodigious pieces of nature, whales, elephants, 
dromedaries, and camels ; these, I confess, are the co- 
lossus and majestic pieces of his hand; but in these 
narrow engines there is more curious mathematicks, 
and the civility of these little citizens more neatly sets 
forth the wisdom of their maker. 

Rel Med. p. 42. 

Thus there are two books from whence I collect my 
divinity; besides that written one of God, another of 
his servant Nature, that universal and publick manu- 
script that lies expansed unto the eyes of all. 

This was the scripture and theology of the heathens ; 



W. COWPER. 201 

England ! with all thy faults I love thee still, 
My country ! 

The Tash, book ii. line 206. 

Brutes graze the mountain tops with faces prone 

And eyes intent upon the scanty herb 

It yields them ; or recumbent on its brow 

Ruminate, heedless of the scene outspread .... 

Man views it and admires, but rests content 

With what he views ; the landscape has his praise 

But not its author .... 

Not so the mind that has been touched from heaven, 

And in the school of sacred wisdom taught 

To read his wonders. 

Task. v. 785. 



The soul discerns 
A ray of heavenly light gilding all forms 
Terrestrial, in the vast and the minute 
The unambiguous footsteps of the God 
Who gives its lustre to an insect's wing, 
And wheels his throne upon the rolling worlds. 

Task. V. 810. 



Familiar with the effect we slight the cause, 
And in the constancy of Nature's course, 
See nought to wonder at. Should God again, 
As once in Gibeon, interrupt the race 
Of the undeviating and punctual sun 



202 SIR T. BROWNE. 

the natural motion of the sun made them more admire 
him, than its supernatural station did the children of 
Israel ; the ordinary effect of nature wrought more ad- 
miration in them, than in the other all his miracles. 

Rel Med. p. 42. 

We disdain to suck divinity from the flowers of na- 
ture. 

Rel Med. p. 43. 

Nor do I so forget God, as to adore the name of 
Nature. 

Rel. Med. p. 43. 

God hath so contrived his work, that with the self- 
same instrument, without a new creation, he may effect 
his obscurest designs. Thus he sweeteneth the water 
with a wood ; preserveth the creatures in the ark, which 
the blast of his mouth might have as easily created ; for 
God is like a skilful geometrician, who when more easily 
and with one stroke of his compass he might describe 
or divide a right line, had yet rather do this in a circle 
or longer way, according to the constituted and forelaid 
principles of his art. 

Rel. Med. p. 43. 

Thus I call the effects of Nature the works of God, 
whose hand and instrument she only is, and therefore to 
ascribe his actions unto her is to devolve the honour of 
the principal agent upon the instrument ; which if with 
reason we may do, then let our hammers rise up and 
boast they haf e built our houses, and our pens receive 
the honour of pur writing. 

j Rel. Med. p. 44. 



W. cow PER. 203 

How would the world admire ! but speaks it less 
An agency divine, to make him know 
His moment when to sink and when to rise 
Age after age, than to arrest his course 1 

Tash vi. 121. 

Not a flower 

But shows some touch, in freckle, streak, or stain. 

Of his unrivalled pencil. 

Task. vi. 240. 

Nature is but a name for an effect 

Whose cause is God. 

Task. vi. 223. 

Thou fool ! will thy discovery of the cause 

Suspend the effect, or heal it ? Has not God 

Still wrought by means since first he made the world, 

And did he not of old employ his means 

To drown it ? What is his creation less 

Than a capacious reservoir of means 

Formed for his use, and ready at his will '? 

Task. ii. 196. 



The mind enlightened from above 
Views Him in all : ascribes to the grand cause 
The grand effect. 

This truth philosophy, though eagle-eyed 
In nature's tendencies, oft overlooks. 
And having found his instrument, forgets 
Or disregards, or more presumptuous still. 
Denies the power that wields it. 

Tash iii. 225. ii. 174. 



204 SIR T. BROWNE. 

These must not therefore be named the effects of For- 
tune but in a relative way and as we term the works of 
nature. It was the ignorance of man's reason that begat 
this very name, and by a careless term miscalled the 
Providence of God ; for there is no liberty for causes to 
operate in a loose and straggling way, nor any effect 
whatsoever but hath its warrant from some universal or 
superiour cause. 

Rel Med. p. 46. 

The doctrine of Epicurus that denied the providence 
of God, was no atheism, but a magnificent and high- 
strained conceit of his majesty, which he deemed too 
sublime to mind the trivial actions of those inferiour 
creatures. That fatal necessity of the stoicks, is no- 
thing but the immutable law of his will. 

Rel. Med. p. 50. 

That there was a deluge once, seems not to me so 
great a miracle as that there is not one always. 

Rel. Med. p. 53. 

Men's works have an age alike themselves ; and 

though they outlive their authors, yet have they a stint 

and period to their duration. 

Rel. Med. p. 56. 

Who from the name of Saviour can condescend to 
the bare term of prophet. 

Rel. Med. p. 57. (see knee in Index.) 

Persecution was the first stone and basis of our faith. 
None can more justly boast of persecutions, and glory in 
the number and valour of martyrs ; for to speak properly, 
those are true and almost only examples of fortitude. 



W. cow PER. 205 

We give to Chance, blind Chance, ourselves as blind, 

The glory of thy work. 

But Chance is not, or is not where thou reign'st ; 

Thy Providence forbids that fickle power 

(If power she be that works but to confound) 

To mix her wild vagaries with thy laws. 

Task. V. 865. 



Thus dream they, and contrive to save a God 
The encumbrance of his own concerns, and spare 
The great Artificer of all that moves 
The stress of a continual act, the pain 
Of unremitted vigilance and care. 

Task. vi. 205. 



What prodigies can power divine perform 
More grand than it produces year by year 1 

Task. vi. 118. 

We turn to dust, and all our mightiest works 
Die too. The deep foundations that we lay 
Time ploughs them up, and not a trace remains. 

Task. V. 531. 

Who knee 
Thy name, adoring, and then preach thee man. 

Task. vi. 886. 

Patriots have toiled, arid in their country's cause 
Bled nobly, and their deeds, as they deserve. 
Received proud recompence .... 
But fairer wreaths are due, though never paid, 
18 



206 SIR T. BROWNE. 

Those that are fetcht from the field, or drawn from the 
actions of the camp, are not oft-times so truly precedents 
of valour as of audacity, and at the best attain but to 

some bastard piece of fortitude If any, in that 

easy and active way, have done so nobly as to deserve 
that name, yet in the passive and more terrible piece 
these have surpassed, and in a more heroical way may 
claim the honour of that title. 

Rel Med. p. 58. 



To speak properly, there is not one miracle greater 
than another, they being the extraordinary effect of the 
hand of God, to which all things are of an equal facility, 
and to create the world as easy as one single creature. 
For this is also a miracle, not only to produce effects 
against or above nature, but before nature; and to 
create nature as great a miracle as to contradict or 
transcend her. 

Rel. Med. p. 60. 

Since I have understood the occurrences of the 
world, and know in what counterfeit shapes and 
deceitful vizards times present represent on the stage 
things past, I do believe them little more than things to 
come. 

Rel. Med. p. 62. 

I believe that those many prodigies and ominous 
prognosticks which fore-run the ruins of states, princes, 
and private persons, are the charitable premonitions of 
good angels, which more careless enquiries term but 
the effects of chance and nature. 

Rel Med. p. 64. 



W. COWPER. 207 

To those who posted at the shrine of truth 

Have fallen in her defence. A patriot's blood, 

Well spent in such a strife, may earn indeed 

And for a time insure to his loved land, 

The sweets of liberty and equal laws ; 

But martyrs struggle for a brighter prize, 

And win it with more pain. . . They lived unknown 

Till persecution dragged them into fame 

And chased them up to heaven. 

Tash v. 704. 

All we behold is miracle, but seen 
So duly, all is miracle in vain ... 
What prodigies can power divine perform 
More grand, than it produces year by year ? 
And all in sight of inattentive man ! 

Tash. vi. 118. 



Some write a narrative of wars and feats 
Of heroes little known, and call the rant 
An history ! 

Tash. iii. 139. 



Meteors from above 
Portentous, unexampled, unexplained. 
Have kindled beacons in the skies .... 

Frowning signals, which bespeak 
Displeasure in his breast who smites the earth 
Or heals it, makes it languish or rejoice. 

Task. ii. 57. 



208 



SIR T. BROWN E. 



There may be (for aught I know) an universal and 
common spirit to the whole world. . . I am sure there 
is a common spirit that plays within us, yet makes no 
part of us ; and that is the Spirit of God, the fire and 
scintillation of that noble and mighty essence which is 
the life and radical heat of spirits. 

Rel Med. p. 65. 



There are singular pieces in the philosophy of Zeno 
and doctrine of the stoicks which, I perceive, delivered 
in a pulpit pass for current divinity. 

Rel. Med. p. 79. 

To perfect virtue, as to religion, there is required a 
panoplia, or complete armour. 

Rel. Med. p. 94. 

I wa§ not only before myself, but Adam ; that, is in 
the idea of God and the decree of that synod held from 
all eternity. And in this sense I say, the world was 
before the creation, and at an end before it had a 

beginning. 

Rel Med. p. 97. 

In the cradle of well-ordered polities. 

Rel. Med. p. 101. 

I draw not my purse for his sake that demands it, 
but His that enjoined it. 

Rel. Med. p. 101. 

I hold that there is a physiognomy, not only of men, 
but of plants and vegetables. The finger of God hath 



W. COWPER. 209 

One Spirit (his 
Who bore the platted thorns with bleeding brows) 
Rules universal nature .... 

There lives and w^orks 
A soul in all things, and that soul is God . . . 
The Lord of all, himself through all diffused, 
Sustains and is the life of all that lives. 

He feeds the secret fire 
By which the mighty process is maintained. 

Task. vi. 184. 221. 238. 

How oft, when Paul has served us with a text. 
Has Epictetus, Plato, TuUy, preached ! 

Task. ii. 539. 



Armed in panoply complete 
Of heavenly temper. 

Task. ii. 345. 

In whose thought the world, 
Fair as it is, existed ere it was. 

Task. V. 798. 



In the cradled weakness of the world. 

Task. V. 286. 

Not for its own sake merely, but for His 
Much more who fashioned it, he gives it praise. 

Task. V. 800. 

Not a flower 
But shows some touch, in freckle, streak, or stain, 

18* 



210 



SIR T. BROWNE. 



left an inscription upon all his works, not graphical or 
composed of letters. . . . Delineated by a pencil that 
never works in vain. 

Rel Med. p. 102. 

There was never any thing so like another as in all 
points to concur ; there will ever some reserved differ- 
ence slip in to prevent the identity ; without which two 
several things would not be alike, but the same, which 
is impossible. 

Rel Med. p. 103. 

I have not only seen several countries, beheld the na- 
ture of their climes, the chorography of their provinces, 
topography of their cities, but understood their several 
laws, customs, and policies ; yet cannot all this persuade 
the dulness of my spirit unto such an opinion of myself, 
as I behold in nimbler and conceited heads, that never 
looked a degree beyond their nests. 

Rel. Med. p. 114. 



The world that I regard is myself, it is the micro- 
cosm of my own frame that I cast my eye on ; for the 
other, I use it but like my globe, and turn it round some- 
times for my recreation. 

Rel. Med. p. 120. 



There is surely a piece of divinity in us, something 
that was before the elements and owes no homage unto 
the sun. 

Rel. Med. p. 120. 



W. COWPER. 



211 



Of his unrivall'd pencil. 
Nature, enclianting nature, in whose form 
And hneaments divine I trace a hand 
That errs not. 

Task. vi. 240. iii. 721. 

Th' Almighty Maker has throughout 
Discriminated each from each, by strokes 
And touches of his hand with so much art 
Diversified, that two were never found 
Twins at all points. 

Task. iv. 734. 

He travels and expatiates, as the bee 

From flower to flower, so he from land to land ; 

The manners, customs, policy of all 

Pay contribution to the store he gleans. 

He sucks intelligence in every clime. 

Task. iv. 107. 

[Where men of judgment creep and feel their way 
The positive pronounce without dismay , 
Where others toil with philosophic force, 
Their nimble nonsense takes a shorter course. 
Conversation. Southey^s Cowper, v. 8. p. 258.] 

Surveying thus at ease 
The globe and its concerns, I seem advanced 
To some secure and more than mortal height, 
That liberates and exempts me from them all ; 
It turns, submitted to my view, turns round 
With all its generations. 

Task. iv. 94. 

There lives and works 
A soul in all things, and that soul is God. 

Task. vi. 184. 



212 



SIR T. BROWNE. 



Let me not injure the felicity of others, if I say I am 
as happy as any ,- ruat coelum, fiat voluntas tua, salveth 
all ; so that whatsoever happens it is but what our daily 
prayers desire. 

Rel Med. p. 120. 

Lastly, let us compare the trustful passage at the close 
of this noble work with the peroration of the fifth hook 
of the Task, and thus part with these two kindred spirits 
at a moment ivhen they both {to use the language of a 
third) proclaim. 

The deep, deep joy, of a confiding thought.* 

These are, O Lord, the humble desires of my most 
reasonable ambition, and all I dare call happiness on 
earth, wherein 1 set no rule or limit to thy hand or pro- 
vidence ; dispose of me according to the wisdom of thy 
pleasure. Thy will be done, though in my own un- 
doing ! 

Rel. Med. p. 127. 



* Wordsworth. 



W. COWPER. 213 

Happy the man who sees a God employed 
In all the good and ill that chequer life ! 
Resolving all events, with their ettects 
And manifold results, into the will 
And arbitration wise of the Supreme. 

Task. ii. 161. 



But oh, thou bounteous Giver of all good, 
Thou art of all thy gifts thyself the crown : 
Give what thou canst, without thee we are poor, 
And with thee rich, take what thou wilt away ! 

Task. V. 903. 



3nba. 



INDEX. 



A. 

Abbreviatures 146. 
Abjectest (most abjectest) 113. 
Abrupt (verb) 40, 178. 
Abyss of mercies 91. 
Acceptions 71, 81. 
Access (fit) 28. 

Access (addition or increase) 48. 
Acquests 157. 
Acquitments 165. 
Additionary 185. 
Admonished into 107. 
Adventurous 42. 
Adumbration 35. 
Advertise (forewarn) 174. 
Advisees 48. 
Affections (qualities) 70. 
Afflictive 149. 
Afflictively 1G4. 
After (afterward) 1 03. 
After-penitences 192. 
Agrees to 94. 
Alarum 32, 151. 
Alphabet of man 120. 
Ambidexterous 187. 
Ambulatory (morality not) 138. 
Amphibium (man) 68. 
Amphibology 83. 
Amuse (engage) 164. 
Angry devotions 58. 
Angustias (agonies) 168. 
Antecedencies 160. 
Anthropophagi 72. 
Anticipatively [ Preface.] 
Antimetathesis of Aug. 71. 
Antinomies 52. 
Antiperistasis 118. 
Antipodes to the wise 144. 
Antipoisons 148. 
Apogeum 182. 

19 



Apparel (verb) 104. 

Apparitions (appearances) 144. 

Apprehend (fear) 92, 108, 163. 

Apprehend (understand) 121, 148. 

Appro vable 169. 

Archetypal sun 183. 

Areopagy of our hearts 183. 

Argue the proceedings, &c. 92, 93. 

Argue of prodigality 94. 

Armature of St. Paul 145. 

Arriving to 46. 

Arrogancy 44. 

Asperous 133. 

Aspires (subs.) 66. 

Asquint 28, 39. 

Assassine (verb) 106. 

Assize 126, 144. 

Assuefaction, 177. 

Asterisk 64, 143, 151. 

Astral prediction 160. 

Astronomized 177. 

Atheist to the world's god 124. 

Atropos (man his own) 108. 

Atropos of fortunes 135. 

Attrition 157. 

Averse from 100. 

Automatons part of mankind 145. 

Awaked souls 122. 

Awaked judgment 121. 



B. 

Badness 78. 
Bastard fortitude 58. 
Beatifical 183. 
Bedward dormative 123. 
Beholding (beholden) 80. 
Beneficiency 184-5. 
Beneplacit of God 97. 
Benevolous aspects 48. 



218 



INDEX. 



Bethinks 74. 
Better-advanced 115. 
Bivious theorems 171. 
Borrowed understandings 104. 
Bowelless 136. 
Bravery 146. 
Brazen-browed 153. 
Bushes (signs) 102. 



Cadavers 178. 

Cadaverous 73, 

Cassarian conquest 180, 

Caitiff (adj.) 104. 

Calculate thyself 174. 

Canicular days 77. 

Cankers of reputation 142. 

Cantons 42. 

Capitulation (merciful) 160. 

Caricatura 181. 

Carnified 72. 

Carrack 136. 

Catholicon 118. 

Ceased (miracles are) 60. 

Cenotaph 35. 

Centoes 125, 

Central natures 157. 

Central fire 151, 

Central interiours 157, 

Champian 172. 

Changelings 63. 

Chaos of futurity 146, (158), 

Chiromancy 102. 

Choragium of the stars 182. 

Chorography 114. 

Christianize 165, 187. 

Circumscriptions of pleasure 155. 

Chyraicks 89. 

Civility (of bees, &c.) 42. 

Civility of my knee, &c. 27. 

Clawing (tickling) 144. 

Classical rules 138. 

Climacter 62. 

Coaction 184. 

Coetaneous 175. 

Cognition (retrograde) 181. 

Cognizance 150. 

Colony of God (the soul) 90. 

Colonies of heaven 191. 

Colossus 42. 



Combustion 56, 
Commiserators 173. 
Commonweal 46, 55, 141. 
Commonwealth 49, 125, 15T. 
Commutative justice 124. 
Commntatively iniquous 179* 
Compage of truth 156, 
Compellation 96, 
Compensate our brief lenn 195, 
Complacency 144. 
Complement of happiness 87. 
Complement of tortores 88. 
Complemental (adscititious) 47^ 
Com plexionably prepense 33. 
Complexioned for humility 108. 
Complicated with 152. 
Composure 114. 
Comprehend (fathom) 37, 39, 
Comprehend (include) 120. 
Compute (subs.) 170. 
Concordance of history 63. 
Conceit (verb) 49, 114. 
Concluded (drawn) 55. 
Concourse (divine) 48, 52, 119'. 
Confinium of spirits 182. 
Confirmable by sense 85. 
Conformant 70. 
Consequence (upon consequence) 

33, 63. 
Considerators 150. 
Consist (stand) 28. 
Consist (agree) 71, 144. 
Consort (verb) 99. 
Consorts (companions) 28. 
Consortion 175. 
Constellated 100. 
Contaction 165. 
Contentatlons 155, 161. 
Contracted hand of God 164. 
Contradictors 156. 
Conversion of the needle, 42, 85, 
Convincible madness, 83. 
Corps of the soul 71,122. 
Corpulency of bodies 69. 
Cosmography of myself 42. 
Cottages of breasts 153. 
Counterfeilly (Preface.) 
Cradle of polities 101. 
Crambe 126. 
Crany 72. 
Crasis 71. 
Create and make 70. 



INDEX. 



219 



Critically (seasonably) 175. 
Crooked piece of man 115. 
Crowd of themselves 176. 
Cryptick, 45. 
Crystalline heaven 140. 
Crystalline of tljy soul 182. 
Cunctation 152. 
Curricle (course) 190. 
Cymbal of applause 137. 
Cymbal in the breast 1 52, 



D. 



Dashed with vices 148. 

Dastard (verb) 112. 

Decimation (merciful) 1 65. 

Decrepit 63. 

Degeneration 148, 150, 192. 

Degenerous 140, 173, 184. 

Deject 104. 

Delators 142. 

Deposition (overthrow) 55. 

Depravedly (Preface.) 

Derived to 64. 

Derogate from 153. 

Designments 192. 

Diabolism 140. 

Diameter (stand in) 26. 

Dichotomy 34. 

Difference (verb) 26, 28. 

Difficultest, 34. 

Digladiation (fcncing-match) 145. 

Disavouchcd 29. 

Discontent (verb) 121. 

Discruciating 186. 

Displacency 138, 155, 173. 

Disproving, 29. 

Disputed them 33. 

Dispute proceedings 91. 

Disputed way (deputed ?) 79. 

Dissembled (in good sense) 91. 

Dissentaneous (Preface.) 

Dissimilary 119. 

Doradoes 100. 

Dormative (subs.) 123. 

Dormitories of the dead 73. 

Doubling (playing false) 186. 

Doublings (turns) 46. 

Drum (verb) 90. 

Duality 110. 

Dull aot away thy days 151. 



E. 

Earless generation 174. 
Economy (man's) 141. 
Edge (of belief) 35. 
Edified (formed) 52. " 
Effront 75. 
Elator 186. 
Elder than 74. 
Eleemosynaries 102. 
Elohims of the earth 142. 
Elongation 149. 
Eluctation of truth 158. 
Embasement 148. 
Embryon felicities 178. 
Embryon truths 158. 
Empress (opinion) 161. 
Empyreal (subs.) 87. 
Empyrean ocean 179. 
Enemy vices 119. 
English gentleman 153. 
Enharden 75. 
Enlivening death 165. 
Entanglements 145. 
Entities 191. 
Entrails of the sun 178. 
Ephemerides 117, 143. 
Epicycle of ambition 141. 
Epicycle of my brain 31. 
Epidemical transgressions 112. 
Equilibriously 157. 
Erectly 181. 
Ergotisms 157. 
Estranged ashes 85. 
Eternized 106. 
Ethnick superstition 57. 
Evacuate (render needless) 186. 
Exaltation of gold 75. 
Exantlation of (ruth 158. 
Exasperate ways of death 166. 
Existency 191. 
Existent 53. 
Exits (tragical) 164. 
Exolution (Christian) 196. 
Exorbitancy 178, 189. 
Exordial (this life) 191. 
Expansed 43. 
Expired merits 151. 
Extances 191. 

Extemporary knowledge 67. 
Extempore wicked 150. 
Extramission 164. 



220 



INDEX. 



Extremest 88. 
Extremity of mercy 92. 
Exuperances (exaggerations) 171. 

F, 

Factories of the devil 143. 
Failed o/ 81. 

Faint-hued in integrity 137. 
Falsifier (of money) 159. 
Father (verb) 98, and Preface. 
Father-sin 113. 
Feminine manhood 179. 
Ferity of mind 179. 
Fit of harmony 116. 
Fit of happiness 121. 
Festination 151. 
Flat (downright) 70. 
Flaws (gusts) 133. 
Flexible sense (Preface.) 
Fleshless cadavers 178. 
Folious appearances 157. 
Foolishest 116. 
Forelaid 44. 
Foreshow 45. 
Forgot 91. 

Fougade or powder-plot 45. 
Founded 165. 
Four-footed manners 181. 
Fraught 39. 
Fright away 76. 
Fruitful voice of God 85. 
Fruitions of doubtful faces 178. 
Fugitive faith 57. 
Funambulatory track 133. 
Fundamental hfe 190. 
Funeral of death 1 65. 
Further and farther (used indiffe- 
rently) 



G. 

Galliardize 121. 
Gap for heresy 31. 
Gaping vices 160. 
Geography of religion 26. 
Glanced by (missed) 157. 
Glome or bottom 79. 
Gordian knots of life 168. 
Graffs of education 101. 



Grain (verb) 173. 
Grained in honesty 137. 
Gramercy 45. 
Grateful retaliations 180. 
Gravelled 51. 
Greener studies 31. 
Grotesques 42. 
Gulled 161. 
Gust ofthe world 187. 



H. 

Haggard reason 36. 

Halting concomitances 133. 

Hammer of offences 112. 

Handsome anticipation 196. 

Hatch (verb) 112. 

Heels of pride 141. 

Helix 46. 

Hellebore 124. 

Hermitage of himself 177. 

Hermaphrodiiically 150. 

High-slraincd 50, 187. 

Histrionical (the world) 186. 

Histrionism 190. 

Hits of chance 45. 

Holocaust 134. 

Homerican Mars 179. 

Horoscope 81. 

House of flesh 75. 

House of Hfe 122. 

House of darkness 167. 

Hull (verb) 133. 

Humourists (not good humoured) 

166. 
Hypostasis 67. 



I. 



Ideated man 148. 
Idiosyncracy in diet, air, &c. 99. 
Immoderacy 154. 
Impassible 90. 
Imperfect (verb) 148. 
Impostures (impostors) 108. 
Impregnate 44. 
Improperations 26. 
Impulsions 101, 174. 
Inadvertency 164. 
Inadvertisement 177. 



INDEX. 



221 



Inculcated unto 142. 

Incurvate 77. 

IndifFerency 71. 

Indissoluble (not to be solved) 118. 

Individuals 45, 67, 85, 

In-draught 189. 

Inform (animate) 38, 70. 

Ingrateful 166. 

Ingression 196. 

Iniquous 179. 

Innocuous 141. 

Inorg-anical.71. 

Inorganitj of the soul 72. 

Inquinated (defiled) 161. 

Insolvency 96. 

Insolent zeals 97. 

Instances of time 37. 

Intelligences 46. 

Integrity (perfectness) 135. 

Intend (extend) 175. 

Intercurrences 149. 

Interiourly 183. 

Interiours of men 188. 

Interiours of truth 157. 

Intermissive 189. 

Intrinsecal 147. 

Inverted on 118, 

Invented (excogitated) 64. 

Ironically (men live) 186. 

Iterated 137, 173, 184. 



J. 



Janus-faced 171. 



K. 

Knee (civility of my knee) 27. 
Knee (owe a knee) 48. 
Knee (worthy our knees) 77. 



L. 

Laconism 146. 
Laconically suffering 179. 
Lacteous stars 190, 
Ladder of creatures 63. 
Lazy (the sloth) 151. 
Laqueary combatants 145. 

19* 



Leaven (verb) 133. 
Leaven of wisdom 59. 
Lecture (perusal) 55. 
Lectures on mortality 76. 
Legacied 104. 
Lieve (as lieve) 35. 
Ligaments of the body 73, 122. 
Ligation of sense 121. 
Like (likely) 146. 
Lions' skins (armour) 134. 
Litany 119. 

Lived (men are lived) 31. 
Livery of virtue 84. 
Longanimity 169, 192. 
Longevous generations 169. 
Loyalty to virtue y4. 
Lucifcrously 171. 
Lure of faith 36. 



M. 

Magisterial 68. 
Magnalities of religion 182. 
Magnetically 137. 
Maligning 25. 
Managery 134. 
Mannerliest 61. 
Map of time 187. 
Marble conscience 112. 
Marble memories 185. 
Materiallcd unto life 73. 
Mediocrity (with) 28. 
Memorist (conscience) 143. 
Metempsuchosis 31, 72, 158, 181, 

190. 
Meticulously (timidly) 151. 
Microcosm (man) 68, 74, 89, 119, 

120, 
Microcosmical 174. 
Militants 105. 

Militia of life 141,145, 174. .' 

Mimical conformation 170. 
Mince themselves 34. 
Mind (verb) 50. 
Minorate 177. 
Miserablest 74. 
Misery of circumference 90. 
Modest ignorance 115. 
Monstrosity 44, 100, 112. 
Moralist of the mount 187. 
Moralize our actions 174. 



222 



INDEX. 



Morosity 27. 
Mortify (deaden) 184. 
Mortified (scattered) 85. 
Most abjectest 115. 
Mother-sins and vices 172. 
Mutilate (adj.) 125. 
Myself could show 52. 
My own and mine own (used in- 
differently) 



N. 

Naked appetite 154. 
Nativity of our religion 29. 
Natural royalists 166. 
Naturality 49. 
Nebulous stars 190. 
Necessitousness 136. 
Negative impieties 57. 
Nimble heads 114. 
Nocent (subs.) 144. 
Noctambuloes 122. 
Noise of the moon 142. 
Non-entiiy 192. 
Nor cannot 72, 
Nor never 90. 
Nor take none 112, 
NovcUizing 146. 
Novity 146. 
Nullity 70. 
Numerous numbers 190. 



O. 

Object (propose) 98. 

Oblivion of ing-ratitude 14,3, 

Observators 164, 177. 

(Edipus (man's own reason) 30. 

CEdipus (Providence) 145. 

Offer at 186. 

Olympiads 143. 

Opacous side of opinions 171. 

Only (alone) 70, 125, 192. 

Omneity 70. 

Opiniatrity 161. 

Opinioned 54, 69. 

Omnipresency 176. 

Orbity 188, 

Osseous part of goodness 172. 

Ostiaries 172. 



Ovation 134, 

Out-sce 88-9. 
Out-talk 114. 



Painted mistakes 144. 

Palative delights 154. 

Pantalones and anticks 77, 

Parallaxis 157, 

Parallel (verb) 32. 

Parallelisms 187. 

Parenthesis (digression) 105. 

Parenthesis in eternity 194, 

Parentheses of consideration 150. 

Patroned (verb) 30, 105, 

Paucity 154. 

Peccant 161, 

Pedagogy 164. 

Peer (equal) 153. 

Peradventure (subs.) 137. 

Perfect (verb) 148. 

Pericardium of truth 157, 

Perfectcst 93, 103, 118, 

Periods (of persons) 164, 187. 

PericEci 144. 

Periphrasis 35, 

Periscian state 178. 

Perpend 93, 

Perspective (glasses) 166, 

Peruse 53. 

Perusing 120. 

Pervert (in good sense) 43. 

Phantasms 73. 

Phylacteries 143, 178. 

Phytognomy 102. 

Pickthank 142. 

Pinax of man's life 133. 

Pinnacles of divinity 38. 

Pitiful (mean) 153, 182. 

Pleasurists 189. 

Plebeian heads 100. 

Plume (verb) 113. 

Plunged 51. 

Poetry by Sir T. B. 40, 65, 123. 

Poles of honesty 137. 

Policies 114. 

Polities 101. 

Poltron (subs.) 145, 

Poltron (adj.) 153, 

Pontifical 155. 



INDEX. 



223 



Pose 60. 
Posy 118. 
Powerfullest 88, 
Potion of immortality 118. 
Practised conclusions 124. 
Precocity (virtuous) 152. 
Predestination 37. 
Predestinate forms 85. 
Predestinated 41, 46. 
Pre-existimation 157. 
Preferred (lifted) 68. 
Prejudicate 51. 
Preordered 47. 
Premonition 64. 
Preordination 191. 
Preordinate 46. 
Prescience 180, 192. 
Prescious 37. 
Prescript 93. 
Prescription 162. 
Preventeth (saveth from) 153. 
Proceed (graduate) 40. 
Prodigious in revenge 179. 
Produce (lengthen out) 73. 
Profound (plunge) 93. 
Profound (search into) 40, 41. 
Prognostick (verb) 96. 
Prohibit to 27. 
Prologue to death 80. 
Prompts unto us 177. 
Propense 33. 
Proper virtues 150, 175. 
Propriety 141. 
Proprieties 150. 
Pucellage 36. 
Punctual (minute) 54. 
Punctual (exact) 82, 137. 
Punctual memorist 143. 
PuU-backs 177. 

Q. 

Quadrate (subs.) 164. 
Quadrate (verb) 107. 
Queasy stomachs 118. 
Questionless 28, 59, 63. 
Quodlibetically 156. 
Quotidian infirmities 113. 



R. 



Rabble 100, 176. 



Rapt (subs.) 145. 
Receipt (prescription) 71. 
Recompensive justice 84. 
Reduce (level) 84. 
Reduced (led to) 71. 
Refections 154. 
Reflex (subs.) 39, 126. 
Regiment 74, 119. 
Regression 150. 
Regretfully 193. 
Rejoices (subs.) 159. 
Reminiscential amulets ] 77. 
Remoras 177. 
Renascency 191. 
Resolved conscience 27. 
Resolutions (resolvers) 26. 
Resound (subs.) 152. 
Resume ihemsclves 186. 
Retaining lo 74. 
Retiary combatants 145. 
Retractations 160. 
Retracted looks 166. 
Retribute unto 41. 
Retrograde rognition 181. 
Return the duty 40. 
Return upon 180. 
Reverberated (by fire) 89. 
Revivification 85. 
Revolve (verb act.) 117. 
Revulsions 177. 
Rhetorick of misery 101. 
Rhetorick of Satan 51. 
Riddle of sin 94. 
Riddles in providence 173. 
Rodomontade 77. 
Rusticity 40. 
Roun riles 38. 
Rudder of the will 140. 
Rubbidge 178. 
Rubs 45, 162. 



S. 

Salve (verb) 54, 61, 66, 70, 120. 
Salvifically 165. 
Sanctuary of St. Paul 37. 
Scape of infirmity 112. 
Scarce (adv.) 32, 175, 188, 195. 
Scattered differences 190. 
Scatteringly 169. 
Scenical differences 125. 



224 



INDEX. 



Scenical mourninjr 137. 

Scheme of man 181. 

Schemes of look 162. 

Scratch of offences 179. 

Scripture of the heathens 43. 

Secondine (slough of flesh) 75. 

Secretary of hell 51. 

Seldomness 153. 

Self-conversation 176. 

Self-ended souls 184. 

Self-idolatry 144, 

Self reflections 160. 

Semi-bodies 125. 

Seminals of iniquities 172. 

Seminalities of vegetables 148. 

Sequestered imaginations 119. 

Sepulchre of thyself 143. 

Shadow of corruption 176. 

Shadowed lesson 116. 

Shaken hands (bid adieu) 26, 77. 

Sharp (play at) 112. 

Signatures of mercy 102. 

Single hearts 186. 

Singularest 55. 

Sinistrous 186. 

Sinistrously 140. 

So soon 185. 

Solary nature of gold 88. 

Solemness 186. 

Solicitudinous 151. 

Sordidest 104. 

Sorites 48. 

Sortilegies 47. 

Soul (translated divinity) 90. 

Sour (verb) 137. 

Sourly 160. 

Speak my soul 91. 

Speckled face of honesty 160. 

Specifical 67, 88. 

Speculate (ponder) 124. 

Speculate the universe 177. 

Spintrian 113. 

Square (verb) 29. 

Stabbing truth 140. 

Staggeringly evil 150. 

Stair of creatures 66. 

Starts (subs.) 164. 

Station (fixation) 43. 

Statists 125. 

Statute madness 83. 

Stenography 38. 

Stint (subs.) 56. 



Stories (histories) 68. 
Strabo's cloak 95. 
Stygian oaths 184, 186. 
Subordinate (verb) 69. 
Sub-reformists 95. 
Subterraneous idol 124. 
Successless 141. 
Suck divinity 43. 
Suggesting us unto 73. 
Supererogate 124, 179. 
Super-heresies 33. 
Superstructions 137. 
Supinity 151. 
Supputation 48. 
Surd generation 174. 
Suspensory assertions 157. 
Swart tinctures 173. 
Swell not 142. 
Swoon of reason 62. 



Tables (game at) 47. 
Targum (commentary) 138. 
Tares of the brain 71. 
Teeth of time 56. 
Temper (constitution) 71, 77, 78 
Temperamental 188. 
Tenacity of prejudice 158. 
Tenent 54. 

Tetrick philosophers 147. 
Textuary 83, 187. 
Theory of himself 108. 
Thread of life 79. 
Thread of days 78. 
Thread of time 188. 
Theorical mistakes 141. 
Thetas (natural) 144. 
Throughly 67, 122. 
Timorous assertions 157. 
Tower (verb) 113. 
Traduction 127. 
Trajection 107. 
Transanimation 190. 
Translate a passion 109. 
Translated divinity 90. 
Transpeciate 63. 
Transplace 150. 
Traverse (overpass) 92. 
Trenchers 73. 
Trinity of souls 37. 



INDEX. 



225 



Triple continent 54, 162. 
Trisagion 140. 
Triumvirate in the soul 49. 
Tropical (figurative) (Preface.) 
Truce (pause) 30. 



U. 

Ubi of spirits 75. 
TJbiquitary essence 69. 
Ultion 180. 
Unaccessible 86. 
Unbeing 191. 
Uncharity 96. 
Uncharitable logic 106. 
Undelightful 189. 
Under-heads 94. 
Underliving 145. 
Underweening 191. 
Unexerted 146. 
Unexistent 181. 
Unheard-of 113. 
Uniterable life 189. 
Unlimitable 88. 
Unman not thyself 181. 
Unremarkable 55. 
Unsatiable 87. 
Unseparable 168. 
Unthinking 176. 
Unthought-of 46. 
Un tractable 59. 
Untwine 40, 
Unwary 25. 
Unwelcome 54. 
Urn of the Vatican 56. 
Utinam 56. 



Venerable (reverend) 62. 
Venerable (reverential) 84. 
Vermy (venew) 94. 



Vespilloes 73. 
Virtuous washes 173. 
Visible hands of God 48. 
Visitation (scrutiny) 44. 
Visive organs 182. 
Vitiosity 78, 112. 
Vivacious abominations 169. 
Vizards 62. 
Vizard vices 161. 
Voice of the world 108. 
Votes of hell 111. 



W. 

Wail (subs.) 190. 
Waked senses 121. 
Walls of flesh 72. 
Walls of man 70. 
Washes (virtuous) 173. 
Weeds of the brain 71. 
Well-wishes 124. 
Wheel (verb) 101. 
Wheel of providence 46. 
Wheel of the church 31. 
Wheel of things 183. 
Wheel of inclinations 145. 
Wilderness of forms 85. 
Windows of time 169. 
Winged thoughts 171. 
Wingy 34, 66. 
Wittily wicked 166. 
Wits o' work 156. 
Wiser zeals 28. 
Wormed out 63. 
Worser 77, 160. 
Wrenches in life 45. 
Writ (verb) 56. 



Z. 



Zodiacal 19.3. 
Zoilism 155. 



226 INDEX. 



UNUSUAL PLURALS, OR IN UNUSUAL POSITIONS. 



I 



Accomplishments 181. 
Acquitments 165. 
Actions 74. 
Ambitions 142. 
Apprehensions ISO. 

Beginnings and ends 79, 163. 
Beings 157, 190. 
Beliefs 38. 

Considerations 101. 
Contents 189. 
Contentments 161, 178. 
Credits 105. 

Deflexions 149. 
Degenerations 192. 
Destructions 163. 
Disparities 147. 
Devotions 58. 
Discretions 110. 

Ends 79, 91. . 
Exorbitancies 178, 
Expressions 39. 

Fates 163. 
Felicities 178. 
Fortunes 135, 163, 
Fruitions 178. 

Graduations 75. 
Gratitudes 185. 

Honesties 141. 

Impieties 57, 59, 
Inabilities 184. 



Incomprehensibles 182. 
Ingenuities 77, 184. 
Inquiries 64. 
Interiours 188. 
Invisibles 182. 

Merits 32, 151. 

Natures 32, 102, 122, 162, 190. 

• 

Penitences 192. 
Personations 190. 
Pieties 102. 
Pities 194, 165. 
Progenies 76. 
Proprieties 150. 

Reasons82, 94, 104, 115, 118. 
Rebellions 113. 
Reparations {Preface.) 
Repentances 192. 
Repugnances 99. 
Respects 59, 
Rejoices 159, 
Retaliations ISO. 
Ruins 64. 

Self-reflexions 160. 
Seminalities 148. 
Securities 161. 
Sleeps 121. 
Symmetries 162. 

Tranquillities 178. 

Unnaturals 186. 

Zeals 28. 



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